MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The Russian government remains optimistic that the national economy continues on its way to recovery in 2017, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said Thursday.
Quizzed at a press briefing about how the Russian economy was faring, Shuvalov replied, "much better than a year ago." "We have positive expectations … We are cautiously optimistic," he added.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev predicted in mid-December that the national economy would start to grow this year, after seeing a less than 1-percent decrease in gross domestic product in 2016.