I do not exclude that the growth in GDP reaches four percent this year, Kudrin said in a presentation to the State Duma this week. That is one percent higher than official prognosis, newspaper Kommersant reports.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in his annual speech to the State Duma yesterday stressed that Russia successfully has handled the financial crisis.
“Russia reacted to the crisis like a powerful country, which does not wait for everything to change by itself, but [which] acts actively and with decisiveness”, Putin said. He added that “all our steps and all the budget resources now work for the most rapid possible revival of the economy, [and] the vitalization of the labor market”.
At the same time, Putin admitted that the crisis had caused serious concern and a feeling of uncertainty in the Russian population, quite similar to the ruble crisis of 1998 and even the economic revolution of 1992. In the course of one year, the Russian GDP dropped 7,9 percent and industrial production declined 10,8 percent
Read Putin’s speech to the State Duma here
