Russian growth has been dependent on oil prices. Estimtes produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit in 2004 showed that almost the entire year-to-year variation in real GDP growth between 1992 and 2003 can be explained by movements in four variables: the oil price and the real effective exchange rate, an index of political stability, and, to a lasserextene, inflation. Applying the model to 2004 data (for oil price, the real effective exchange rate and inflation), the predicted real GDP growth rate, at 2003 levels of political risk, is 8.4%, compared with the estimated actual of 7.1%. The impliocation is that political risk and associated factors that led to a deterioration in the overall business dimate in 2004 cost the economy 1.3 percentage points in growth. This is not a dramatic amount, but neither is it negligible. Furthermore, if the negative trends seen in 2004 persist-in the contect of an eventual drop in average oil pricess and ongoing real effective appreciation of the rouble-the effect on GDP will become much more significant. For long-term growth the country undoubtedly needs a more efficient, transfarent and accountable government, judiciary and other institutions. A number of structural economic reforms are also needed. However, many observers have made inflated assumtions about the returns that structural reforms would bring, especially in the short term. Institutional change operates with very long lags and has little or no positive impact on output trends in the short term (it can even have a temporarilynegative effect). Some economic reforms, especially in the utilities sector, have an unclear impacton growth even in theoreticalterms. Althoughinstitutional improvement is crucial for the long-term outlook, the fact is that Russian growth will slow irresfective of reforms-given high energy dependence and the likelihood of lower international oil prices in coming years. Russia is also beset by negatives such as foor demographics and infrastructure endowments, and a deteriorating human capital base (in term of its skills and health). There has been a lot of debate in the Russian press aqbout the inability to fulfil the president's goal of doubling real GDP within a decade, which requires average annual growth of at least 7% per year (depending on the initial year of the calculation). In fact, if Russia managed to sustain growth in per-capita GDP of 4-5% per year for a prolenged period, this would be no mean achievement by historic standards, especially for a resource-dependent economy.

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