Page 9 - bne IntelliNews Country Report: Russia Dec17

observers estimate the share is at the lower end of the scale. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) earlier put the share at around 35%, but EBRD stopped publishing that piece of information in 2010, according to the Bank of Finland Institute for Economies in Transition (BOFIT).
“In any case, the share of Russian GDP produced by the government sector and SOEs is far less than 70%, a figure floating around for the past couple of years. The 70% figure actually refers to the ratio of gross earnings or spending of government budgets and SOEs to GDP (which despite the term "gross" measures net flows of goods and services),” BOFIT said in a recent note.
Having said that SOEs in Russia still account for a much larger share of the economy than in other emerging markets such as Turkey or Brazil.
“Public ownership may be a drag on firm efficiency and may limit competition, and the state's role in the economy is naturally a much broader issue than mere shares of GDP,” BOFIT concluded.
2.3 Why Russian elections may derail Putin’s biggest critic
With Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin almost certain to run in the upcoming presidential ballot and secure another term in office, attention has focused on an intriguing subplot to the election story: the candidacy of television celebrity Xenia Sobchak . As the first non-Kremlin puppet to take part in an election for 20 years, she could deal a blow to the political aspirations of leading Putin critic and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny.
Sobchak threw her hat into the ring last month, with some suspicious that the move had been hatched by the Kremlin to split the opposition and present the ballot as a competitive vote. Sobchak, whose father, former St Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, was Putin’s political mentor, has dismissed the speculation. She acknowledges that she has no chance of winning the election – describing it as a “high-budget show” – but insists that she is mounting a genuine campaign, dubbing herself the “protest candidate”.
Several factors suggest she is her own woman: her oppositional pedigree and criticism of the government’s record – in particular the intervention in Ukraine, and the absence of free elections – and the Kremlin’s apparent attempts to discredit her.
Before she announced that she intended to stand, sources close to the presidential administration sought to cast her as a puppet. They whispered to the media that a female candidate was being sought to challenge Putin in the elections. Later other sources suggested that this person might be Sobchak, then the President’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke positively about her possible candidacy. It all suggests that Putin’s inner circle wanted to place her in an uncomfortable position, and sow the seeds of doubt about her intentions in Russian and Western media.
As she attempts to reassure voters, Navalny has troubles of his own. A trumped up embezzlement conviction prevents him from standing, but he will campaign with typical determination nonetheless. Navalny has his eyes not on
9 RUSSIA Country Report December 2017 www.intellinews.com