ST PETERSBURG (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday the idea of moving major companies’ headquarters to regions outside Moscow deserves attention and called for better vocational education to help ease labor shortages.
Laying out a host of ambitions for Russia’s $2 trillion economy, Putin said the world’s second-largest oil exporter needed to cut imports, significantly increase the use of non-Western currencies in trade settlements and called for a major expansion of domestic financial markets.
Putin, speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, said that trade with Asia is growing rapidly and that almost 40% of Russia’s foreign trade is now conducted in rubles, while the share in US dollars, euros and other Western currencies has fallen.
Putin said Russia would seek to increase the share of payments carried out in the currencies of the BRICS countries, a group of economies that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
“Last year, the share of payments for Russian exports in the so-called “toxic” currencies of unfriendly states was halved, and the share of the ruble in export-import transactions is growing – today it is approaching 40%,” Putin said.
Russia regularly refers to countries, mostly Western, that have imposed sanctions against it over the war in Ukraine as “unfriendly countries.”
Russia must reduce imports by creating competitive production and increasing investment in fixed assets by 60% by 2030, Putin said.
He added that by the end of the decade, the value of the Russian stock market should double and account for two-thirds of Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP).
Over the past two years, the Russian economy has defied Western sanctions. The official forecast for economic growth for 2024 is 2.8%, following growth of 3.6% last year – faster than the United States or European Union.
The recovery has been helped by Moscow’s heavy spending on defense and security, but economists say growth is dependent on state-funded arms and ammunition production, masking problems that are holding back any improvement in Russians’ living standards.
Many officials also cited labor shortages as a key problem, exacerbated by military mobilization in 2022 and the emigration of hundreds of thousands of people since the start of the war in Ukraine. Russia’s central bank has repeatedly said this is a key obstacle to increasing production.