Aven spoke about the "lost years" for the Russian economy

Recent years for RUSSIA can be called lost in terms of economic growth due to lack of investment and lack of positive changes in the business environment. This was stated in an interview with RBC by the chairman of the board of directors of Alfa-Bank, a member of the supervisory board and a shareholder of Alfa Group, Petr Aven.

“Yes and no,” he answered the question of whether it is possible to speak of a lost decade for the Russian economy. There was a “rather fundamental transformation of the economic model, the most obvious characteristic of which was inflation targeting,” Aven explained: due to “repressed inflation”, all countries experienced problems with GDP growth, so a slowdown in Russia was expected.

Since 2013, the country's maximum GDP growth rate has not exceeded 2.5%. According to the Accounts Chamber, the average annual growth rate of the economy from 2013 to 2019 was 0.9%. In January-September 2020, the Russian economy fell by 3.4%, Rosstat estimated.

“On the other hand, primarily due to the fact that we maintained a very low level of investment - about 20% of GDP for Russia is an insufficient figure - we did not provide the economic growth we wanted, we did not reduce our debt. Since 2013, the total debt of Russian companies has remained the same as 60% of GDP. To be sure, in terms of debt repayment in the low interest rate environment that was the result of the change in fiscal policy, this is a bad result. Lack of investment is a bad result,” says Aven.