Economist: Russia’s economic growth set to slow

Russia’s economic growth looks set to slow over the next decade, Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill said over the weekend.

“Oil prices will definitely not do what they’ve done the past 10 years, and that’s not going to be great news for Russia,” Bloomberg quoted him as saying at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 8.

Russia’s economy is currently the tenth biggest in the world and it grew by 8.1 percent last year, according to Reuters.

However O’Neill predicts that Russian GDP will grow 3.3 percent annually between 2010 and 2015 before dropping off to 2.9 percent for the five years after 2015.

In 2020 Russia’s GDP will be USD 3 trillion and it will be the eighth biggest economy in the world, according to O’Neill.

Russian officials disagree and First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov predicts Russia will have the sixth biggest economy in the world by the end of this year.