By Andrei Skvarsky.
Investment bank Renaissance Capital has reaffirmed its forecast that Russia’s gross domestic product for 2020 will be 2.5 per cent down on 2019, which defies the consensus forecast of a decrease of more than 4 per cent.
In reiterating RenCap’s prediction, senior economist Sofya Donets made the reservation that the overall situation was still very uncertain.
Donets, who is economist for Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, was speaking during RenCap’s 24th Annual Virtual Investor Conference in Moscow, which was held on June 23, 25 and 26.
Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the conference was an online event, being the first virtual conference in the series.
RenCap anticipates Russia’s coronavirus-battered economy to show its first signs of recovery in the second half of 2020, Donets said.
She expressed confidence that Russia is fiscally stable and will keep its BBB credit rating.
She argued that the government’s current efforts to improve corporate governance, give tax concessions to domestic investors and ensure higher dividends for holders of shares in state-owned companies are likely to provide a sound basis for a robust stock market.
Russian central bank deputy chairman Alexey Zabotkin said during the same conference that the regulator stuck to its forecast of a 2020 GDP decline of between 4 and 6 per cent.
He said that Russia’s economy would grow by between 2.8 and 4.8 per cent in 2021 but excluded the possibility of real GDP returning to its 2019 level before the first quarter of 2022.
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