Russia’s economy ministry projected in April last year that the economy would contract between 8.8% to 12.4% in 2022.
One year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s economy appears to have fared better than an expected “meltdown” — but experts have raised a red flag about the data itself.
A day before Russian President Vladimir Putin gave his state of the nation address on Tuesday, Rosstat, the federal state statistics service, said the country’s GDP shrank by 2.1%. While this contraction reversed a 5.6% GDP growth in 2021, it did far better than an 8.8% to 12.4% contraction that Russia’s economy ministry projected in April 2022.
In his state of the nation speech, Putin went on to tout the resilience of Russia’s economy amid the sanctions — even though “an economic meltdown was projected” earlier last year in the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine, state-run TASS news agency reported.
However, Russia’s official statistics have come under scrutiny because it stopped publishing certain key economic statistics — like import-export data — citing a need to curb errors and “speculation” about its trade, per a Reuters report on April 22.
The Russian central bank feels this makes research and forecasting challenging, according a Financial Times January 29 report.
