| Headline: Will Russia let growth slip? Source: Euromoney Date: January 2002 Author: Ben Aris The economy is booming, but Russia’s stellar growth rates of the past three years are already starting to slow. The impact of the cheap rouble and high international oil prices are beginning to wear off. President Putin must embark on painstaking structural reforms or the boom could peter out. But that means taking on powerful entrenched interests.
“It is not easy to go back to 1999 where most of the growth was import substitution,” says Oleg Vyugin, economic adviser to the government and a former deputy finance minister. “Most of the easy things have been done and the spare factory capacity taken up. To squeeze more growth out of the economy will take big investment projects. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||