Battle of experts: according to what scenario will the economic crisis develop

One of the hot discussions on the eve took place on the Finam.ru site.

Yekaterina Maksimova

Dmitry Zhuravlev, Director General of the Institute for Regional Problems:

- The current economic crisis is quite large-scale. The banal connection between the price of energy and the price of goods, which even freshmen know, has somehow been ignored. It seemed to everyone: well, yes, oil companies may suffer, or, on the contrary, they will win on price games, and nothing else will happen. Everyone understood that this was the base, the basis of all other economic sectors, but somehow it was not perceived as a subject of calculation, in my opinion.

Any economic crisis creates the conditions for a political crisis, but for a political crisis to take place, we need not just difficult socio-economic conditions, we need a structure that can take advantage of this. As Vysotsky sang: “We didn’t have enough leader, there are few real violent ones - that’s why there are no leaders”.

A crisis, firstly, does not always turn into discontent, because difficult conditions can somehow be explained to people, persuaded, said: wait, help, it will be fine. And, secondly, even if there is discontent, it still needs to be channeled with the help of strong opposition. I don't see that either here or there.

Sergey Suverov, investment strategist at Arikapital Management Company:

-The crisis will be long, it may last for several years. The problem is that macro-stability is deteriorating - there will be a budget deficit, public debt will grow, while the possibilities to borrow abroad are limited, import substitution has potential, but it will inevitably lead to a decrease in the quality of goods for consumers, the quality of life of the population will worsen. The currency enters a period of heightened instability.

Doctor of Economic Sciences Yevgeny Gontmakher in an interview with Novye Izvestia:

- It can last more than one year. There is no point in guessing, because we are very seriously dependent on external circumstances. Even with such a colossal number of sanctions, which are gradually making our economy weaker, primitivizing it, the economy will continue to exist. It just reminds me of the 90s. And people will somehow survive. But get ready: it's for years. In the 90s we had a protracted chronic crisis. These were also years of falling real incomes of the population, their recovery, and then a sharp drop due to the 1998 default. And it lasted 10 years.

Valery Mironov, Deputy Director, Development Center Institute, Higher School of Economics:

-Basically, all estimates show 2022–2023. a fairly similar picture: a deep decline in production (from -5% to -8%) and a sharp jump in prices in 2022, a "residual" recession and inflation in 2023, after which there will be relative stabilization in subsequent years (at the level of 2-2, 5% - according to our consensus forecast and about 3.5% - according to official forecasts).

Taking into account the described statistical data and business surveys for May-June, when there was no strong deterioration compared to March as a whole, in my opinion, the likelihood of a new scenario of a more extended crisis with a lower rate of GDP decline this year than it seemed initially is growing, but with the continuation of a noticeable fall in GDP in the next, when the previously accumulated inventories run out and sanctions in the form of restrictions on oil exports, which are likely to be introduced at the end of this year, will come into full force.

Sergey Khestanov, macroeconomic adviser to the CEO of Otkritie Investments:

- The standard of living in 1985 recovered around the beginning of the 2000s. If this crisis turns out to be not cyclical (as in 2008), but structural - in 15 years.

Olga Belenkaya, head of the macroeconomic analysis department of FG Finam:

- The next two or three years may be the most difficult. Direct analogies do not work here, but for 2012-2021, the average annual growth of Iran's GDP was only 0.58%, and Iran's GDP per capita for 2012-2020, according to the World Bank, decreased by almost 70%.

Marat Safiulin, Manager of the Federal Fund for the Protection of the Rights of Depositors and Shareholders:

- The answer to this question depends on what is considered a sign of a way out of the crisis. If we consider the dynamics of GDP as an exit criterion, for example, GDP growth over 2-3 quarters, then we may well be talking about the end of 2023 - in 2024. (There is optimism for 2024 in the forecasts of the Ministry of Economic Development). However, in many ways, the dynamics of GDP depends on the depth of the fall that the economy will experience this year.

One can also refer to the Iranian "analogy", where the economy moved northward about 5 years after the revolution and the start of sanctions. But for our southern neighbor, the entry into sanctions was much more extended.

If we focus on the restoration of GDP to the level of 2021, I believe that it will take at least 5-6 years. True, in this case, one must understand that the structure of the national GDP may change significantly over the years. By the way, in Iran, the pre-revolutionary GDP was restored for 15 years.

Finally, the terms for restoring the competitiveness of the Russian economy in the world market may be longer.

In any case, sanctions restrictions will cause a shift in economic development towards the domestic market. In this regard, the risks of technological backwardness of the Russian economy will increase. If we turn to the Iranian example, then such a lag is evident, despite the fact that at times the country's economy developed very quickly.

But all these forecasts are conditional, since they assume the preservation of sanctions restrictions at the current level. Let's hope that sanctions are not with us forever.