The first president of Kyrgyzstan visiting USUE

A meeting with the first President of the Kyrgyz Republic, Askar Akayev, was held at Ural State University of Economics.

A politician and scientist, professor of the Faculty of Global Processes at Lomonosov Moscow State University, a specialist in macroeconomics, Askar Akayev, shared the forecasts for the future of the Russian economy, which he and his colleagues modeled at MSU.

“Negative forecasts that predicted Russia’s GDP drop from Western sanctions by 8.5% or even 12% in 2022 did not come true. And today, even the pro-Western International Monetary Fund allows for the Russian economy to grow by 0.3% in 2023,” Askar Akayev notes. “But our real goal is to reach 2% GDP growth by the end of the year and thus come to the level of development before the start of the SMO.”

The main factors that determined the stability of the Russian economy, according to the expert, are the support of backbone industrial enterprises with soft loans and the modernization of the transport and logistics infrastructure, which made it possible to quickly reorient the country’s economy “to the East”.

However, according to the forecasts of scientists, without targeted efforts, in the future, the country can add “by inertia” no more than 1.2-1.4% of GDP per year. In order to reach an average world growth rate of 3% or 4%, it is necessary to develop innovative industries and R&D, and for this, to increase the number of specialists engaged in science from the current 350 to 500 thousand people, which will approximately correspond to the level of Japan, one of the most recognized technological leaders in the world.

During the meeting, teachers and students asked the scientist a lot of questions: Is there a future for digital currencies? Does Russia need to focus on the foreign or domestic market? Is it easy to be president and what is it like to return to “big science” after such a long break?

According to the expert, digital currency is an inevitable future of the global economy. And Russia, which today is one of the pioneers of the industry, should by no means abandon its efforts to develop this line of growth. It is not worth to bet on foreign markets, according to Akayev, since the time of export-oriented economies is gradually fading into the past. It is necessary to create a strong domestic market. However, this requires the country to have a large and wealthy middle class. In his opinion, socio-economic development is one of the primary goals facing the country today. And USUE can also contribute to achieving this goal.

Answering personal questions, the first president of Kyrgyzstan told how in the 80s, while still a young Soviet scientist, he did not even think about a political career. However, in the years of perestroika, at the suggestion of colleagues from the Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences, he was nominated to the deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. There he was noticed by the famous Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov, at that time an adviser to the President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev. Thus began his 15-year political career. However, he does not regret returning to science and is grateful to Russian universities, with which he is currently working on solving both fundamental and applied economic issues.