ALEXANDER KNOBEL ON WHETHER RUSSIA WILL BE ABLE TO ENSURE ITS FOOD SECURITY

Increasing demand and rising prices in the world food market have been observed for several years already, and the Russian government has implemented, as of now, a package designed to protect the domestic market from global food inflation. In an interview with Izvestia, head of the Gaidar Institute’s International Trade Department Alexander Knobel expressed his confidence that the measures launched at the government level would make it possible to reduce the impact of the unfavorable global food market situation, since they have already proved to be effective.

“While over Q2 world prices climbed 10-11%, Russia’s domestic producer prices increased only by 2.5%. Due to the Russian government’s ability to regulate domestic prices, their growth rate can be kept below the global average. Obviously, world food inflation somehow has been crawling through into our market, but the damping mechanism has already been created specifically to control this phenomenon effectively,” explained the economist by way of summing up.