Experts: Economic Decline Slowing

Russia's economic decline is bottoming out and there are signs of stabilization, Russian and Western economists said Tuesday in unusually optimistic forecasts.


The experts, from a government policy center and the Economics Ministry, noted however that a shaky ruble and inflationary expectations are threatening to disturb the balance.


"The economy has hit bottom and is drifting there, getting ready to rise to the surface," Sergei Pavlenko, director of the government Center for Economic Reform, told a news conference.


Over the past three months, Pavlenko said, total foreign investment has hit $600 million a month compared to a mere $150 million at the start of the year, and production of some goods has grown between 1 and 3 percent monthly. He said that the return of expatriated Russian money accounted for between 20 percent and 40 percent of the foreign investment and that capital flight was on the wane.


Pavlenko's positive assessment comes as the Economics Ministry has predicted that Russia's steep production decline is likely to slow significantly next year. In a preliminary forecast designed to provide guidelines for the 1995 budget, the ministry predicted a fall in gross domestic product of only 5 percent to 7 percent next year, compared to about 16 percent this year, Interfax reported In its forecast, the Economics Ministry assumed sharp cuts in subsidies to the agriculture and coal industries and the further freeing of energy and transport prices, which would allow the government to cut the budget deficit to 8 percent and halve inflation.


The Center for Economic Reform says monthly inflation increased to 6 percent in September from 4.5 percent in August, and is expected to rise to 7.7 percent in October. The State Statistics Committee put September inflation at 7.7 percent, up from 4 percent in August. Despite the latest inflation rise, Peter Oppenheimer, an Oxford University economics professor who advises the center, praised the government for controlling price rises by "pursuing a serious policy of cutting the budget deficit."


Pavlenko warned, however, that current instability in the currency market, coupled with growing prices, represents a major threat to the country's hard-won economic stability.


"Stabilization is in question," he said, adding that recent government credits to industry have fueled fears of higher inflation.


"Inflationary expectations are growing among industry managers, who tend to expect the monthly rate to rise to between 8 percent and 10 percent by the end of the year."


Pavlenko criticized the Central Bank for its manipulation of the hard currency market over the past two months, which has led to sharp fluctuations in the ruble-dollar exchange rate. He said that the instability has attracted a flood of speculative money that would otherwise have gone to industrial investment. "Investors feel like coming back to the currency exchange to play more," he said.


Oppenheimer said that the government's relatively tight monetary policy has also had a down side, aggravating Russia's inter-enterprise debt crisis by delaying payment of funds to industry.


Although mutual corporate debt was reduced to 7 percent to 8 percent of GDP in September from 13 percent to 14 percent in July, it remains a major headache for the government, he said.


But it is not entirely the result of a lack of money. A recent government report says many enterprises that claim they cannot pay workers are actually putting the money in short-term investments.


Oppenheimer estimated that Russian companies hold a total of $30 billion in short-term deposits. "It looks like somebody is not paying salaries in order to accumulate this money," he said.