Ghost economy exceeds $275 billion in Russia

The planned expenditures of the federal budget in 2019 are amounted to 18 trillion rubles ($275 billion).

According to Rosfinmonitoring (the Federal Service for Financial Monitoring), last year, ghost economy in Russia was amounted to 20.7 trillion rubles ($315 billion) which is 20 per cent of the country’s GDP. As a comparison, in 2019, the government is planning to spend 18 trillion rubles ($275 billion) from the federal budget. Russians’ incomes in 2018 were 57.5 trillion rubles ($877 billion) with Gazprom’s annual revenues being 6.5 trillion rubles ($100 billion), reports RBC.

In 2015-2016, the ghost economy was 28 per cent of the country’s GDP. According to the financial intelligence, in 2017, amounts of suspicious money that was offshored and entry of shadowy finance flows from abroad went down. Meanwhile, the calculation methods changed, as well: a certain part of the ghost economy stopped being considered such.

The notion of ghost economy includes grey import, concealment of income with the purpose of avoiding tax and customs payments, payment of illegal salary. According to the Russian Federal State Statistics Service as of late September, 2018, 14.9 million persons which is 20.4 per cent of the total of the employed are informally present in Russia’s economy. Amount of grey salaries in 2017 was 11.8 per cent of GDP which is about 10.9 trillion rubles ($29 billion).

According to the International Monetary Fund, in 2015, the level of the ghost economy in Russia was 33.6 per cent of GDP.

via