The article received on June 2, 2020
In response to the economic sanctions against Russia imposed by the United States and supported by countries in the EU, Canada, Australia, Japan, the Russian President issued a decree of 06/08/2014 No. 560 “On the Application of Certain Special Economic Measures to Ensure the Security of the Russian Federation”. In accordance with the document, since August 7, 2014, the import of certain foods is restricted. The government decided to take a course of active import substitution, which is associated with a package of sanctions and an unstable foreign political situation [5]. A high assessment of the development of agriculture for the period under consideration was given by V.V. Putin at a meeting on the situation in agriculture and the food industry held on May 20, 2020. He noted that “In recent years ... the Russian agricultural and industrial sector has gained high, outstripping growth rate and strengthens its position as a modern, high-tech industry with good potential for quality growth”.[8].
The analysis of the long-term dynamics of the main macroeconomic indicators is currently associated with the problem of violation of the comparability of time series because of the completion of the transition to OKVED (Russian National Classifier of Economic Activities) 2 and the need to recalculate the indicators. If earlier hunting and forestry (OKVED) were taken into account together with agriculture, then in accordance with the new classifier, the agricultural sector is considered under the VED (Foreign Economic Activities) “Agriculture, forestry, hunting and fishing”, data for which are presented starting from 2015. This has significantly changed the indicators of gross value added (GVA), employment, investment, which makes it difficult to compare the main relative indicators.
The economic situation in 2015-2018 was characterized by a gradual recovery in the positive dynamics of gross domestic product (GDP). The GDP growth rate increased from 0.3% in 2015 to 2.3% in 2018. Real GDP was 2.4 percentage points higher than in 2014, which compensated for the crisis decline after the imposition of economic sanctions. For the agricultural sector under the conditions of the food embargo with significant state support, the period was generally favorable: for 2014-2018 the GVA of agriculture increased by 14.0 %. However, it is worth noting that the overall impact on economic growth, despite the active recovery of the agro-industrial complex, is limited due to the low share of the sector in the GDP structure (3.1 %).