Changing the national accounting standards that Russia uses will mean a significant nominal increase in the value of the country's gross domestic product, the head of Russia's State Statistics Service said in an interview published Wednesday by the RBC newspaper.
Along with other countries around the world, Russia is due to switch to the 2008 revision of the United Nations' System of National Accounts within six or seven years, said Rosstat head Alexander Surinov.
Russia currently operates under the 1993 revision of the accounting system. Last year, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered the country to make the transition to the new standards.
The change will mean that new forms of economic activity are included in the calculations for how Russia's GDP is set, causing a "significant" overnight increase in the country's GDP figure, Surinov told the paper.
(RIA Novosti)
