UPDATE: Putin sees Russia’s GDP growing close to 4% in 2021

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MOSCOW, Jul 19 (PRIME) -- Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) will grow by around 4% in 2021, President Vladimir Putin said during a meeting, devoted to strategic development and projects, on Monday.

“Economic growth will amount to around 4% this year, or close to the figure, I hope. We need to use the positive trends to improve the quality of people’s lives,” he said.

Putin also said that unemployment is seen at 4.9% and has almost returned to 4.7%, the level of 2019.

Russia should not only respond to challenges, but should aim at being a leader, but the current tasks should be solved as well, the president also said.

“Our country should not just respond to challenges, but it needs to strive to be a leader of the global transformation. We have everything for it. Besides we need to set and solve current tasks, we have many of them every day. But we should also remember about systemic tasks,” he said.

Putin added that Russia will not delay implementation of the national projects.

Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said that the government has prepared new initiatives to solve strategic development issues and that additional 736 billion rubles will be necessary for the tasks.

First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov said that Russia’s inflation can reach 5% in 2021.

“A number of actions that were taken at the end of the previous year and this year have helped to knock down the inflation wave, but the annual inflation is still really high, 6.56%... In the entire 2021, we are projecting inflation at around 5%,” he said.

(74.1656 rubles – U.S. $1)

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