Invest-Foresight asked Nikita Ivanovich Maslennikov, head of the Finance and Economics section of the Institute of Contemporary Development, what we faced in 2024 from an economic point of view and what prospects Russia expects in 2025.

– In 2024, a lot of significant things happened. First, it was memorized for overheating the economy. Growth rates are higher than last year, most likely they will be in the range from 3.8% to 4%.
We also memorize that year for an increasing shortage of labor force. According to surveys of headhunters, up to 76% of all enterprises feel a shortage of labor. This was not the case last year.
Inflation. It is high, higher than last year, when it was 7.4%. This year, we are likely to exceeed 10%, because as of December 16, the value was 9.52%, and ahead there are rush consumer demand, bonuses, infusion of budget funds, and so on.
Tax reform. The transition from a flat to a stepped scale of personal income tax, an increase in income tax by 5% and a lot of other tweaks in the tax sphere.
What else? Weak reaction of the economy to the level of the key rate, including due to the rather high volume of so-called soft loans. In the first half of the year, this is 15.6 trillion rubles – this is a significant distortion of the market space.
The following is a rather weak coordination of the actions of the Government and the Central Bank in the first half of the year to combat inflation. In the second half of the year, interaction began to be built more carefully, but so far inflation is ahead of our efforts. Although we must admit that the budget was filled with a fairly high inflationary potential for the next year. This is a structural primary zero balance, and the inclusion in the full program of budget rules for the next year. These are, of course, various kinds of planned measures to increase the efficiency of public spending, which will grow next year at about half the rate that revenues will increase.
Tightening all sorts of measures to control the movement of public finances – this was also a feature of the year 2024. Here they undertook it seriously and in an adult way.
Yes, 2024 is better than 2023 for most macro indicators. But here it is necessary to make an allowance for the inflation (and in this dynamics, inflationary pressure is also present, it is positive). At the same time, the risks of macroeconomic imbalance also increased compared to 2023. Concerns, in a word, increased, including thanks to the jumps in the ruble exchange rate, which showed an amazing clear correlation with each new round of pressure on the financial sector.
Continuation of difficulties with international payments and settlements is in the same piggy bank of economic results in 2024.
Now let’s move on to 2025. It will, in my opinion, be much more difficult than 2024. First, at least all the main indicators of macrodynamics will be half as low. These are GDP rates, investments, consumer demand dynamics, real wages, and real disposable incomes of the population.
Inflation will be lower, but, of course, under no circumstances will it reach the inflation target of 4.5%. Most likely, it will be in the range of 5.5-6.5%, but it may jump out of these limits.
Nevertheless, a clear focus on slowing inflation allows us to hope that the growth rates will be lower, but they will be better and more balanced, healthy and organic. Because the efficiency of government spending will increase, lots of tools will begin to work more targeted, for example, concessional lending.
This will allow us to create a kind of springboard for moving up to the level of 2.5-3% of GDP growth already in 2026-2027. I really hope that the coordination of the financial authorities and the Government to ensure macroeconomic stability will also add in its quality and reach a new level. In this sense, 2025 will have less risks for the current dynamics compared to 2024.
But there are also serious zones of uncertainty. These are, of course, geopolitical tensions. They will continue, and the sanctions pressure may change formats, but will remain. At the same time, it seems to me that the collective West will pay more attention to the implementation of secondary sanctions. It cannot be ruled out, for example, that sanctions will be directly applied to financial institutions in our friendly countries.
The situation with general macrodynamics in the global economy is rather incomprehensible. According to the most cautious forecasts, it will be close to the level of 2024. But there are also risks in all centers of the world economy: both in the United States due to the still complete uncertainty of Trump’s economic and budgetary policies, and in China, where the slowdown in the economy is obvious, and how well all measures to accelerate it will work is not clear. In Europe, too, so far, everything is uncertain, the growth rate in the eurozone will be around 1%. But Europe will still have to go through political crises both in Germany and in France.
Thus, the external circuit, external circumstances that affect our economy, may worsen.
As for oil, the situation is extremely incomprehensible. So far, forecasts suggest that the world is entering a certain supply surplus, which will push the price of black gold down. At least, a sharp increase in quotations is not expected. And this creates additional tension for the Russian budget in terms of the volume of oil and gas revenues.
I think that we will see the first optimistic movements in demographic policy and support for large families. It began actively in 2024, in 2025 one can hope for a certain improvement in the situation. But the labor market, I suppose, will remain at about the same level.
As for the execution of national projects, here we can optimistically say that we will begin to execute them. But first I would like to see their full list when they are all approved. The amount of funding, plus the targets, are not yet entirely obvious – what exactly we want to achieve.
In 2025, it is necessary to pay attention to the situation with health care, there are still too many troubles here. And if any new pandemic happens…
And of course, the main challenge is building mechanisms that stimulate investment activity. Investments in human capital are important here, and it is important to reach also positive developments in this direction. Without this, hope for an increase in labor productivity, and in activity is in question.