Russian President Vladimir Putin cautioned his officials to make sure their efforts to cool down an economy driven to overheating by military spending don’t overshoot and drive it into recession.
“Some specialists and experts are pointing to the risks of stagnation or even recession. This, of course, is not to be allowed under any circumstances,” Putin told the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, an annual conference to showcase the Russian economy that he had once used to attract investment from the West.
The experts that Putin was referring to are led by Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov, who made just that warning on the first day of the conference on Thursday. Reshetnikov had said that while all the economic numbers suggest the economy is still growing, they are “just a rear-view mirror.”
By contrast, he noted, business sentiment suggested very strongly that the economy is “on the brink of a recession.”
Putin pointed to statistics showing that gross domestic product is still growing — by 1.5 percent in the first four months of the year. However, analysts have pointed out that that is due entirely to ever-higher volumes of output from the defense sector to fight the war in Ukraine. Civil sectors of the economy have slowed sharply, as the government has ended various subsidy programs over the past year, notably for residential mortgages.
The government is being squeezed harder than at any time since the invasion by the fact that global prices for crude oil, exports of which generate a third of its revenue, have slumped to their lowest in over three years as Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies opened a battle to win back global market share from higher-cost producers in the United States and elsewhere.
Putin’s public comments are often aimed at settling disputes between the various agencies, businesses and cliques that vie for influence in the Kremlin. In recent months, tension has become more obvious between big business and the central bank, which has had to raise interest rates to more than 20 percent to rein in the inflation caused by excessive government spending.
Putin, who has supported the central bank throughout, again referred to its policy as “responsible” on Friday. But he warned that bringing down inflation, which is still running at nearly 10 percent, was “far from the whole picture.”
“Our most important task this year is to transition the economy to balanced growth,” he said. “That is moderate inflation, and low employment, and the continuation of a positive economic dynamic. It’s important to keep in focus all the indicators of how our [various] sectors and companies are feeling.”
Putin gave no indication at the conference that economic problems were about to force any kind of conciliation with the West over the fate of Ukraine.
“I’ve often said that Russians and Ukraine are the same people,” he said in a panel discussion. “In that sense, all of Ukraine is ours.”
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