Russian economy growing faster than main Western rivals – Putin

The Russian economy keeps growing and has already become the largest in Europe and the fifth largest in the world in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), President Vladimir Putin said while speaking at the ‘Everything for Victory’ forum in the city of Tula on Friday. 

PPP is a metric popular with many economists that compares economic productivity and standards of living between countries by adjusting for the differences in the cost of goods and services.

According to the Russian leader, the country’s economy has demonstrated stability, unlike those of the US and the EU, which are currently in decline. “The fundamental principles of the US’ and EU’s economies are good, they [economies] will rise, but today they are at the bottom, while we are rising,” Putin said.

According to the World Bank, in 2022 China was ahead of the US in terms of PPP, while India and Japan were a respective third and fourth. Russia rounded out the top five, while Germany was in sixth place. Meanwhile, Putin’s top economic adviser, Maksim Oreshkin, said recently that Russia “is already breathing down Japan’s back in the race for fourth place.” 

This week, the IMF significantly raised its growth forecast for the Russian economy, projecting that the country’s GDP will grow by 2.6% this year. The estimate is a sharp increase from its October forecast of 1.1% growth. The forecast for 2025 was also increased by 0.1 percentage point from the October estimate, to 1.1%.

The Russian Economy Ministry expects the country’s GDP to expand 2.3% this year, following 3.5% growth in 2023, according to the preliminary reading.

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