MOSCOW, August 13 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s Central Bank said Tuesday that gross domestic product would grow a meager 2 percent this year, with actual output falling slightly behind potential.
That estimate was slightly more pessimistic than the 2.4 percent that Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev said in an interview published in the Kommersant newspaper the day before.
Russia's economy grew just 1.2 percent in the second quarter of this year, the sixth consecutive quarter of falling growth year-on-year, the State Statistics Service said Friday.
“Stagnation is probably an appropriate term” to describe the Russian economy, but "there is no recession, and there will not be one," Ulyukayev said in the interview, his first since being appointed to his post in June.
He added that the stagnation was due to high levels of social spending and structural problems.
