Day 582
The economy, stupid
Several of our now tens of hundreds of subscribers have asked me to write about Ukraine’s economy during this (Phase 3) stage of the war.
Like most macroeconomists, I rely on Ukraine Economic Outlook and their team for weekly and monthly updates about the country’s balance of payments, macroindicators, trade balance, monetary policy, budget fulfillment, etc.
Here is the summary of the group’s August monthly report:
Summary
2023
GDP. We maintain our forecast for the recovery of the dollar equivalent of Ukraine's GDP from $157 to $170-180 billion (+8-12%). However, the share of the private sector of the economy (including sectors whose income is supported by government spending), according to our estimates, will continue to decline to $47 billion (-11%), from $53 billion, in 2022.
For annual real GDP growth, we improve our previous estimate from 2.7% to 4% (equivalent to 74% of the 2021 real GDP level).
However, given the possibility of a significant renewal of …
