Academician Glazyev - about the main result of the SMO: the raw needle of Russia has already become history

Yekaterina Maximova

Plus, the problem is access to technology.

This is how Sergey Glazyev, ex-adviser to the President of Russia, Doctor of Economics, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, formulated the future of the Russian economy.

"One of the main economic outcomes of the post-SVO period is the elimination of the raw materials-export model of the Russian economy in its original form. Market conditions for trading raw materials, diversified markets, access to foreign technologies and one of the highest levels of marginality of Russian companies among the leading countries of the world - all this is history", - Academician Glazyev said.

He clarified that this does not mean that Russia will have to say goodbye to the raw materials economy. "It will simply shrink at times and cease to bring fabulous profits. There is a plus in this - circumstances force us to get off the raw needle and start diversifying the economy as an inevitable condition for survival. There is definitely no choice here", - Academician Glazyev summed up.

According to the Ministry of Finance, in 2023 the federal treasury should receive 8.9 trillion rubles of oil and gas revenues. However, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov does not rule out a reduction in budget revenues. And this year the deficit of the state treasury may be higher than the planned 2.9 trillion rubles (or 2% of GDP).

Export losses in 2022 are just the beginning, many experts confirm. If we evaluate the gas market, then, as Alexey Belogoryev, Deputy Director for Energy at the Institute of Energy and Finance, noted, the total export of pipeline gas to Europe by the end of 2023 will amount to about 25 billion cubic meters. And compared to 2021, it will shrink by more than five times (the volume of supplies to the SVO was more than 140 billion cubic meters).

"A year ago, not only Russian, but also European experts and politicians were sure that the gas "divorce" with Russia would take the EU at least 15-20 years and would be smooth, sluggish. But it turned out that with the political will and willingness to ignore economic losses, this path can be completed in less than six months. And it is not so important even who is to blame for this (both sides, of course, blame each other). It is important that what happened is irreversible, again mutually beneficial"  - Belogoryev said.

The expert believes that the past year and the prospects of the gas market have put an end to the discussion that without Russian gas, Europe will freeze and disappear. "There is no serious reason to say that Europe will "freeze" in the coming months or even years: there is no question of a physical gas shortage today, and its very probability has significantly decreased. However, the extraordinary economic costs in the form of high prices will remain", - Alexey Belogoryev summed up.

The volume of oil supplies in 2023 also does not cause optimism among experts. As Glazyev recalled, before the sanctions, Russia exported 5.3 million barrels of crude oil per day. 62% of this volume was accounted for by unfriendly countries that have already declared an oil embargo. And from February, a ban on the supply of petroleum products from Russia will also take effect. And the country exported 2.83 million barrels of petroleum products per day, of which 78% were unfriendly countries.

"Out of 8.1 million barrels of daily exports of oil and petroleum products in 2021, almost 5.5 million (pipe+tankers) are unfriendly countries or 68%. By January 2023, Turkey had "disappeared from the scene" as an interceptor of sanctioned oil and China and India remained, which together intercepted about 1.2 million barrels per day compared to the base of 2021", - Glazyev said.

At the same time, Asian partners are interested in Russian oil only at a significant discount - up to 50%.

"Now the conditions assume an inevitable discount to world prices and the market of a mono-buyer or the main buyer in the person of China and India, which will allow them to "wring their hands" to Russian exporters in the battle for more favorable conditions. In the absence of an alternative, there is no other choice," adds the author of the Spydell_Finance tg channel. A discount of 30-50% to world prices, according to the author of the tg channel, is a new reality of today.

And you have to get used to it. There will be no other way. "China is asking for a discount, India is asking for a discount, Turkey is asking for a discount, everyone is wringing Russia's hands and will do it as cynically, harshly, mercilessly as possible", - summed up Spydell_Finance.

Economist Vladislav Inozemtsev in an interview with Novye Izvestia I have already noted that by the end of 2023, the failure of the federal budget may amount to about 5 trillion rubles. "It seems to me that in 2023 we will get a serious additional hole in the budget and the deficit will not be 2% of GDP, as the Ministry of Finance plans, but at least 4.5%", - warns economist Inozemtsev.