Statistics on Savings and Investment in Russia

Abstract

This article presents basic concepts of flow of funds analysis, with application to the Russian economy. Flow of funds analysis can be used to examine private and public savings in an economy, investment decisions of economic agents, development of the financial system and its stability, and prospects for economic growth. Flow of funds accounts are a component of the System of National Accounts (SNA). They integrate capital and financial accounts of the SNA in a single framework of sources and uses of financial flows. Flow of funds accounts provide information about savings of individual sectors and their investment decisions. Monetary authorities, the IMF and World Bank, and business analysts use flow of funds accounts as a tool of analysis. For example, the Federal Reserve System of the US and the German Bundesbank regularly estimate and publish flow of funds accounts for their economies. This method also lies at the heart of financial programming ‐ the approach used by the IMF and the World Bank in their macroeconomic analysis.Russian financial statistics have improved much over recent years. The Central Bank of Russia, Goskomstat, and the Ministry of Finance provide quite detailed information on financial transactions. In spite of this, official estimations of flow of funds accounts and the financial account are still unavailable though some experimental calculations have been made by the staff of the Central Bank. However, there are at least two Russian think‐tanks ‐ the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and the Institute for Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Science (IEF) ‐ that try to fill this information vacuum. The BEA estimates traditional flow of funds accounts, the IEF ‐ the so‐called Social Accounting Matrixes, which include the financial account. In this article we will use flow of funds accounts estimated by the BEA.