Education blog

Russian and Chinese macro-economic fundamentals are among the best in the world, head of Global Markets in Troika Dialog investment company, Peter Ghavami, told Xinhua during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

“There are several reasons for that,” Ghavami, also a partner of the famed Troika Dialog, explained.

“First, Russia has very low debt level, either private debt or public debt. In the second instance, inflation in Russia year-by- year has been lower than six percent, which has not happened for the last 20 years,” he reminded. The low-level debt, combined with low-inflation environment, helped Russian economy to recover mush faster than it was expected.

“We expect this year Russian economy to rise by over five percent. Of course, on the negative side, we are coming up with the very low base level. In other words, there are still a lot of things to do and there is an insufficient rate of bonds for corporations that needed. We expect there will be positive loan growth in the third and fourth quarters of this year,” the economist said.

Russia has successfully gone through the crisis and it must secure its modernization prospects now, he added.

“The most challenging thing for Russia is to make sure that modernization will not happen from the top to down. The process should be organic — in the way China does. That’s why investing in education is a real key to future modernization,” he said.