Page 51 - bne IntelliNews Russia OUTLOOK 2025

Consumption will remain as the key contributor to growth throughout the forecast horizon, albeit at a slower pace during 2025-2026. Consumer demand growth will be driven by high wage growth exceeding inflation as employers struggle to attract workers thanks to a chronic labour shortage.
Strong growth in consumer lending witnessed in 2024 will decelerate due to tightening of the macroprudential policy by the CBR to reduce consumer loans and high interest rates.
All these factors will combine to take the edge off the consumer boom in 2025 as the government tries to engineer a soft landing for the overheated economy.
5.5 TMT
Towards the end of 2024, Russia began to lay off IT specialists, whom the government and employers tried to keep in the country back in 2022 with mobilisation exemptions, preferential mortgages and salary increases. With a double-digit key rate, Russian companies began to freeze expensive projects with unclear returns, and "cut" expenses and staff.
2024 is ending unexpectedly for the Russian IT market: businesses, including technology, are starting to lay off IT teams, despite a severe shortage of personnel in general and in this area in particular.
This brings to an end a period when the brain drain of IT specialists reversed, as about half of those that fled Russia at the state of the war and again during the partial mobilisation September 2023 returned
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