"We learned to react faster": the head of the Accounts Chamber Alexei Kudrin on the fight against the pandemic and its impact on the economy

- Alexey Leonidovich, if we talk, first of all, about crisis decisions in the economic sphere in response to the pandemic, did everything work out well?

Perhaps something needed to be tightened up, or maybe there were some outright failures?

- It is worth noting that no country was ready for a pandemic - neither the United States, nor Europe, nor other leading states with super-medicine that works under normal conditions and is targeted at treatment for the most common diagnoses.

But under such conditions, Russia mobilized pretty well.

In this sense, we are certainly no worse than others, no worse than the best, we met a pandemic.

The fact that we still have state and largely centralized medicine made it possible to quickly take measures and quickly implement them.

Subjects of the Russian Federation immediately received great financial support for the purchase of new equipment and the construction of facilities.

Mobile hospitals were opened in various hard-to-reach regions.

• Alexey Kudrin on measures to combat the pandemic

Yes, for the first two months there were not enough masks, but then this problem was solved.

That is, the mobilization took place quickly, and a month and a half or two after the start of the pandemic, the situation was already quite satisfactory.

Our medicine coped with the flow of patients.

- Was the business satisfied with the financial support from the state amid a pandemic?

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According to polls by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, RANEPA, the Higher School of Economics, most business representatives are still unhappy.

In various areas, up to 20% received assistance, and in some cases, for some specific support measures, up to a third of companies and entrepreneurs in need.

However, the support was not calculated for the majority.

Thus, a tax deferral, subsidies and payroll loans were provided to enterprises included in the list of so-called affected industries.

In most cases, these are small and medium enterprises.

But companies whose industry was not listed on this list did not receive help.

One of the requests of many small and medium-sized businesses was precisely to provide assistance, not only to those on the list of affected industries.

For example, it included: aviation, transport, food processing, restaurants, and everything that is, rather, a service sector.

However, no support was provided to other industries, such as agriculture or manufacturing.

Therefore, someone was dissatisfied.

- The morbidity statistics for the last week are not encouraging.

What preventive steps can or should be taken now, if, of course, we are not talking about masks in buses, but about the economy as a whole?

- Obviously, new restrictions are coming, but, most likely, there will be few of them, and they will be advisory in nature.

Let's see, of course, what will happen next, but now people themselves will be afraid to go to restaurants and shops, the number of people using transport will decrease, and economic difficulties will arise again in a number of industries.

In this sense, I believe that new measures will be needed to support the economy.

But you need to pay attention to the situation of the population.

In the first half of 2020, the number of poor citizens increased by more than a million people.

That is, we are talking about families, which, as a rule, cannot provide themselves with even the most necessary things.

Often these are families in which children go to school or are preparing to go to university.

At the moment, the number of the poor has exceeded 20 million. This means that the government needs additional measures to reduce poverty and help the population.

The government has funds for this.

- The most thundering topic of the last month and a half is Belarus.

How much instability in a neighboring country can come back to haunt the economic consequences for Russia?

How should our authorities behave to keep the risks as low as possible?

- Well, I would say that now the turmoil there does not greatly affect our economy.

Yes, we have a high volume of mutual trade, and these events never add to economic stability.

But, I repeat, I consider this influence to be minimal.

I am not ready to give recommendations to the authorities yet.

- In Europe, because of the incident with Navalny, they again started talking about sanctions.

On the one hand, Russia should have already developed immunity to such scenarios, on the other hand, we are weakened by the same pandemic.

How vulnerable is the country now to such threats or, on the contrary, is it ready?

- I would not say that we have immunity to future sanctions.

Each new restriction will have a new negative impulse.

However, we have adapted to the sanctions that were already announced earlier.

At the beginning, their negative impact was stronger, but then it was practically minimized.

Business was restructured and began to take into account new risks, the government began to react differently and support some industries.

In this sense, we have learned to work and live in these conditions.

- In your opinion, will the European Union or, perhaps, the United States, go to escalate in this sense and introduce restrictions, for example, against Nord Stream 2?

- I don't think any significant sanctions will be imposed on Russia in the near future.

That is, I hope we will not move on to some other level of restrictions.

Most likely, we will observe a kind of nibbling, just like it has been recently.

After all, in the end, other countries, our partners, who are introducing restrictions, may also suffer from the sanctions.

Therefore, let's say, everyone decided not to cross some kind of invisible line yet.

- We would like to talk with you about the current state of the Russian economy.

At the peak of the pandemic, it was expected that the fall in Russia's GDP in 2020 will be about 5%, but now the authorities expect the figure to fall by less than 4%.

Do you agree with this assessment?

What's your prediction?

- According to my forecast, the fall will be more than 4%, maybe even almost 5%.

But exactly somewhere between 4 and 5%.

The economic situation is now definitely better than predicted at the beginning of the pandemic.

At that time, we expected a decline in GDP by 8% for the year.

This was due to the fact that Russia was experiencing the shock of the pandemic, shutdowns of enterprises in several regions, and the shock of low oil prices.

Nevertheless, then we returned to the agreement with OPEC, and since the beginning of the year the average oil price has been not $ 28 or even $ 20, but $ 40 per barrel.

That is, it is much better than the price we were preparing for.

We thought that it would be below $ 30, and $ 40 is not bad, and most likely the value will not fall below this level until the end of the year.

• Alexey Kudrin on the impact of the pandemic on the economy

In addition, the service sector, whose industries experienced difficulties during the pandemic, is less represented in the Russian economy than in the economies of other countries.

The share of small business, which was the most affected, is also smaller in the Russian economy.

And large-scale industry, as a rule, did not stop in most of the territories of the Russian Federation.

So not all of our initial fears were confirmed, and due to the structure of our economy, as well as the agreements on the world oil market, the economic assessment has been improved.

Now we need to develop both small business and the service sector in terms of their share in the economy.

Today, the service industry is not just hairdressers, restaurants or taxis.

It is also design, logistics, financial services.

When they are underrepresented, the country develops more slowly.

- What do you think, what GDP growth rates will be achieved in 2021?

When will we be able to compensate for the losses of 2020?

- Everyone expected high GDP growth rates in 2021, after a big drop in 2020.

But, since this year the economic contraction will not be so deep, the growth rate next year will be about 3%.

This is a good indicator after the crisis.

But in the years to come, I think the growth rate will be around 2%.

- In a pandemic, Russian reserves, in particular the NWF, have not decreased, but, on the contrary, have grown.

Why did the volume of reserve funds grow despite the growth of government spending?

Should reserve funds be used to expand measures to support the economy and the population?

- According to the law, at the beginning of this year, in February, the resources accumulated over the previous year were transferred to the National Welfare Fund.

Thus, the growth of the NWF that has taken place is the inertia of the last year.

In 2019, 3.3 trillion rubles were accumulated, and they came to the NWF this year, while the fund spent about 350 billion rubles.

I think that with an oil price of $ 20 per barrel, the NWF's spending would amount to 2 trillion rubles.

But since the price of oil has recovered to the $ 40 level laid down in the budget rule, the budget can be said to be in a safe zone.

• Alexey Kudrin on the spending of the National Welfare Fund

The world is now going through an unprecedented crisis.

If back in 2009, global GDP fell by only 0.1%, then this year it will decline by 4-5%.

That is, the current crisis is much deeper.

For a number of reasons, Russia does not look as bad now as it did in 2009, when our decline was 8%.

But even now we are experiencing special other mechanisms of the crisis, connected not with the creditworthiness of companies and the demand for their products in the markets, but with the shutdown of enterprises, because it was necessary to ensure the safety of people.

In this sense, additional support from both business and the population is required to avoid further impoverishment.

I think there could be an exception to the budget rule this year.

Even if we spent a third or half of the NWF's funds on such a critical special year, it wouldn't be a big deal.

- You have already mentioned that one of the strongest blows to the Russian economy was the spring collapse of oil prices.

Do you think prices can return to the $ 50 mark in the near future?

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I think that the price will remain between $ 40 and $ 50 per barrel for now.

However, if the global crisis intensifies, fluctuations could occur again.

However, all countries and governments will treat the second wave of the pandemic differently than the first.

During the first wave, no one knew the scale of the infection and the consequences, in terms of mortality.

Now they are more and more boldly about this.

The vaccine has already begun to be sold, we have learned to react faster, from the point of view of medicine.

That is, the consequences of the second wave, even if it is very strong, will be less.

Therefore, governments will impose fewer restrictions.

In this sense, the oil price will not drop to the values ​​it was in the spring.

Not up to $ 20 a barrel.

Moreover, taking into account the validity of the OPEC + agreement, I think prices will remain above $ 40.