The Russian authorities are embroiled in debates over the decision to classify economic data made last year at the backdrop of the Ukraine war and Western sanctions, the Financial Times has learnt.
“The opacity of statistics creates problems even for those inside the system,” an anonymous top official in the Russian Central Bank told the newspaper.
Central Bank chief Elvira Nabiullina is the most prominent proponent of de-classifying most of the financial data, three sources told FT. According to them, the Kremlin is not granting the request yet, however.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov defended the decision, telling the Financial Times, “there is a hybrid war being waged against Russia, including economic warfare. So in those conditions it is completely natural that we are classifying this data”. According to him, “everyone who needs to know, everyone who is part of the economic policymaking process, has access to the whole range of data, statistics and so on”.
However, this does not apply to outside experts. In order to obtain the missing information, both Russian and foreign analysts resort to the unusual means of cross-checking.
“We started to use alternative indicators to trace exports and imports dynamics: fiscal data on imports’ VAT, trade statistics of Russia’s external counterparties, shipping data,” Sofya Donets, head Russia economist at Renaissance Capital, a Moscow investment bank, noted.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Moscow classified most macroeconomic data, including the foreign trade statistics, bank sector data, federal budget implementation, information about gold reserves, energy consumption, and oil exports.
