OREANDA-NEWS The Russian economy passed the peak of overheating in the first quarter of this year, when its growth amounted to 5.4%, in the second it slowed down to 4.8%, former Finance Minister of the Russian Federation, economist Mikhail Zadornov said in an interview with RIA Novosti.

The head of the Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, said at the end of July that the scale of overheating of the Russian economy in the first half of the year reached its maximum in the last 16 years, it was higher only before the 2008 crisis. Earlier, in an interview with the agency, Zadornov noted that overheating was primarily caused by a simultaneous shortage of labor resources and spare production capacity, which limited the potential growth of domestic production.

"This overheating started in the middle of 2023 and, apparently, the first quarter of 2024 was the peak, the growth rate shows this," he said.
According to Zadornov's estimate, the economic growth rate in the second quarter slowed to 4.8% from 5.4% in the first quarter, and by the end of the first half of the year amounted to about 5%.

According to Rosstat, Russia's GDP growth accelerated to 5.4% year-on-year in the first quarter from 4.9% in the fourth quarter of last year. According to the Ministry of Economic Development, GDP growth slowed to 4% in the second quarter. But the Central Bank has a more positive assessment - 4.4%, while in the third quarter the regulator expects economic growth to slow down to 3.2%.

Read the full text of the interview on the website ria.ru On August 9 at 10.00 Moscow time.