«The task of ensuring economic growth in Russia of 3% per year is impossible without increasing the income of citizens, which is why their support has been and remains a priority of state policy». This was stated on Friday, January 15, by the Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation Maxim Reshetnikov at the session of the Gaidar Forum "Hard talk about economic growth".

"Without an increase in household income, without an increase in household consumption, further economic growth and reaching 3% growth, which is our goal, is impossible," the minister stressed.

In this regard, he recalled that throughout the past year, the Government's priority was to support the income of the population – both in the form of direct social payments to unemployed citizens who temporarily lost their jobs or families with children, and in the form of business support. "In the end, the goal of supporting business was also to support workplaces creation," said Maxim Reshetnikov, recalling that the corresponding programs still continue its work. "We now have 5.4 million jobs protected under the FOT 2.0 program (soft loans with write-offs), which are retained by entrepreneurs. We see the high implementation of the covenant under this program," he added.

At the same time, the very structure of consumer spending and preferences can also significantly affect economic growth, the Minister continued. "And here we see that there are significant changes. There are short-term changes due to the closure of the economy, but at the same time there are long-term effects that we need to pay attention to. In particular, there are following questions of changing preferences in the trade: whether the people will get back into the in shopping malls and offline trade in the same volume as before, whether they will return to cinemas, on which model will this field continue to work, whether the demand for international tourism will return and which part of this demand will we be able to substitute with domestic tourism (it is already obvious that it will be a significant part); which part of the employees will remain in distance working", he said. "In many ways, the change in these preferences will cause changes in the structure of the business and, ultimately, in the demand for investment," the minister said.

He also noticed that the concept of "welfare" includes not only income, but also housing conditions, and a comfortable city, the quality of health care, the elimination of digital inequality and access to services, opportunities for self-realization and so on. "This is also a global trend. There are the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and the OECD's "Better Life Goals" methodology. By and large, the new National Development Goals, which were outlined by the President in July, generalize all this best practice and make the concept of economic growth and welfare growth voluminous and comprehensive," Maxim Reshetnikov confirmed.

"We clearly understand that the vast majority of economic growth is due to the growth of people's incomes," he concluded.