“We expect — in a conservative, very cautious scenario — economic growth of about 1 percent in 2010,” Kudrin said at an economic conference in Ulan-Ude.
He did not say what would cause the turnaround.
The prediction is consistent with the forecasts of some economists — the International Monetary Fund said the Russian economy would grow by 1.5 percent next year, while Merrill Lynch predicts growth of 2.4 percent.
Analysts expressed surprise at the optimistic comments from one of the government’s leading fiscal hawks.
“It’s really a cardinal change of opinion for him,” said Mark Rubinshtein, an economist at Metropol. “He has been one of the most pessimism-prone officials.”
Rubinshtein forecasts economic growth of at least 2 percent next year, based on a recent decline in unemployment and a slowdown in the contraction of domestic demand.
Kudrin also gave a range for next year’s budget deficit, which he said would be between 6.5 percent and 7.5 percent of GDP.
Earlier this year, the government said it was going to cap next year’s budget deficit at 5 percent, lower than the 7.4 projected for 2009.
Kudrin said last month the government would not meet that goal because it needed to finance an array of anti-crisis measures, such as issuing special treasury bonds to banks and contributing to a rescue fund for former Soviet republics. In total, the extra spending would reach 420 billion rubles, or 1 percent of GDP, he said.
Despite the seeming expansion, the actual ruble amount of the deficit could in fact be unchanged, as the government is now working from a lower GDP estimate, said Alexandra Suslina, an analyst at the Economic Expert Group.
“Scary as they are, the numbers don’t make it possible to say whether the deficit will be higher in nominal terms,” Suslina said.
Because of this, a greater deficit would not necessarily force the government to borrow more than it planned or draw more money from the Reserve Fund than it originally intended, Suslina said.
But the state still has a wide range of options if it suddenly needed to find extra funds.
The Finance Ministry proposed to hike liquor taxes by 30 percent, beer taxes by 300 percent and gasoline taxes by 10 percent next year, Vedomosti reported Thursday, citing an unnamed source at the ministry.
It wants Gazprom to pay a higher production tax of 162 rubles for every 1,000 cubic meters of gas, up from 147 rubles, and a higher export duty of 35 percent, up from 30 percent, the Vedomosti said.
The ministry’s plan calls for taxes on cigarette makers to increase by 300 percent by 2012, the newspaper said.
A Finance Ministry spokesman declined to comment on the proposals Thursday.
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