MOSCOW, August 21 (RIA Novosti) – Changing the national accounting standards that Russia uses will mean a significant nominal increase in the value of the country's gross domestic product, the head of Russia’s State Statistics Service said in an interview published Wednesday by the RBC newspaper.
Along with other countries around the world, Russia is due to switch to the 2008 revision of the United Nations’ System of National Accounts within six or seven years, said Rosstat head Alexander Surinov.
Russia currently operates under the 1993 revision of the accounting system. Last year, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered the country to make the transition to the new standards.
The change will mean that new forms of economic activity are included in the calculations for how Russia’s GDP is set, causing a “significant” overnight increase in the country’s GDP figure, Surinov told the paper.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recommended that Russia make the switch, Surinov said. Moscow has not yet finished making the change from the 1968 revision to the 1993 revision, but will skip straight to the completion of the 2008 revision, Surinov added.
The key beneficiaries of the change will be big business and foreign investors, whose lives will be made easier by Russia’s conformity with international practice, Surinov said.
“I would add foreign investors to the [list of] major beneficiaries; now Russian statistics will be more understandable for them,” Surinov told RBC. “Our economy will be described in the same language as the economies of their countries.”
