Vladimir Putin will be presented with an economic program aimed at restoring Russia's annual growth rate to 3%, prepared by the Third Rome center at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), whose scientific director is Maxim Oreshkin, deputy head of the presidential administration and former economy minister. The document was reported by the magazine Expert, as noted by The Bell.
The program's authors acknowledge that previous growth drivers are nearly exhausted, including export megaprojects, budget injections, subsidized mortgages, import substitution, the halt of capital outflow, and drawing new workers into the economy. Without changes, Russia's economic growth would slow to 1.6% per year instead of the targeted 3%, the program states. The document assumes the state can no longer sustain previous growth rates by increasing spending, as it did in 2023–2024.
The program is built on 'seven pillars': developing regional infrastructure, introducing AI and robotization, platformizing the economy, building power plants, data centers, and data transmission systems, and restructuring education for continuous retraining. Two more directions involve 'whitening' the economy and increasing the role of private capital. 'The last point is one of the most revolutionary differences from the previous model. The state is proposed to become not the main investor of the new breakthrough, but to create conditions under which businesses and the population would want to invest money in the new economy,' Expert writes.
Financing the reforms is proposed through reducing the budget impulse and achieving a zero structural budget deficit by 2029. The authors also count on lower interest rates after inflation slows, reorienting state support toward private investment, and turning citizens' and companies' savings into 'long-term investment capital.'
The Bell notes that the program's horizon indirectly indicates authorities' expectations about the end of the war: changing the expenditure structure and bringing the structural deficit to zero is planned only by 2029. 'That is, in Russian — when the war ends. Now it's 2029,' the outlet writes. At the same time, the program looks like a standard set of ideas from the presidential administration and the government's economic bloc 'for everything good against everything bad.'