Bloomberg
MOSCOW — Russia’s so-called shadow economy may have grown to about one-fifth of output, according to the head of the statistics service, as illegal trade in everything from guns and drugs to gardening and tuition grew.
The shadow economy began expanding after the end of the third quarter last year as the labor market deteriorated, Alexander Surinov, head of the Federal Statistics Service, said in an interview with the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
Russia’s economy, which last year contracted the most since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, saw the unemployment rate jump from 7.6 percent in September to a four-month high of 8.1 percent in November.
The shadow portion of the economy covers sectors including the production of banned goods and services, “stealth” output to evade taxes and services such as tutoring and gardening, Surinov said.
The estimate is an “indirect product of our macroeconomic calculations,” Surinov told the newspaper.
Based on a total nominal gross domestic product of 10.5 trillion rubles ($354.9 billion) as reported by the statistics service in the third quarter, the shadow economy was worth about $71 billion. Russia’s GDP was equivalent to 38.5 trillion rubles in 2009, or $1.3 trillion, according to a Finance Ministry estimate.
The country’s statistics service is planning to start research into small businesses next year and wants to improve its coverage of personal incomes to provide a “different quality” of GDP estimates, Surinov said.
While the service’s regional branch offices have come under “certain pressure” from local authorities, federal officials have only criticized the speed with which data are provided and the extent of its revisions of indicators, Surinov said.
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