global challenges affecting russia are concerned, we should first of all highlight a long - term reduction in hydrocarbon prices and the slowing economic growth in china. these challenges nourish each other with regard to having an adverse impact on commodity prices. as a result of the ‘ shale revolution ’ opec has lost its opportunity to influence oil prices. the latter started to be determined by the profitability threshold of the majority of shale projects. moreover, energy - saving technologies and an active use of alternative energy sources will also affect oil prices in the long run. one cannot brush aside this prospect the way it was with the ‘ shale revolution ’. a quick return to high oil prices is not expected, so the russian economy must learn to live amid low prices for oil and gas. overall, we should abandon the habit of connecting optimistic target forecasts with growing oil prices, rather than own efforts to restructure the economy. the second external challenge facing russia is the changed growth model and the slowing economic growth in china, which also affect the russian economy due to the downward pressure on commodity prices. according to our estimates, 1 percentage point of china ’ s slowing gdp may cause a loss of almost 0. 5 percentage points in annual rates of economic growth in russia in the medium term. it should be noted that this is true if the current structure of our relationship and the current structure of trade turnover persist. the chinese economy now ranks second in the world and the role played by that country in the global economy and financial markets has increased considerably. the challenge for russia is to reorient to the fast growing sectors of the chinese economy related to consumption and post - industrial economy ( the so - called tertiary sector ). low growth rates of the world economy intensify the need to carry out structural and institutional reforms in many countries to remove the obstacles to a faster economic growth. insufficient attention was paid to such transformations over the past decade. it seemed that nothing should be changed and the global economy showed a confident growth. structural reforms are a formidable challenge. they are often painful, infringe on somebody ’ s interests, and face counteraction. each country should judge for itself what structural reforms are the most important ones and which of them may be implemented with due account of political, cultural and other factors. bis central bankers ’ speeches a special emphasis should be made on monetary policy challenges facing the central banks throughout the world. easy monetary policies helped stabilise the situation in advanced countries, but the quantitative easing

with our expectations. the most important factor that we analysed today is the situation in the economy. we expect that gdp growth rates will be closer to the upper bound of our forecast range of 0. 8 – 1. 3 %. the q3 results show that economic growth accelerated to 1. 7 %. industrial output keeps growing. in october, after a prolonged slowdown, we saw an increase in annual retail sales growth. this was supported by an acceleration in real wage growth largely due to inflation slowdown amid relatively unchanged nominal wage growth. starting in september, we have observed a notable increase in budget spending on national projects. in the second half of the year, government investment started to support economic growth. at the same time, we have yet to estimate the stability of higher economic growth rates. demand remains contained in general. various investment activity and business sentiment indicators show mixed dynamics. in particular, new ( especially, export ) order expectations in industry remain low. this reflects a slowdown in global economic growth, continuing global trade tensions and geopolitical risks. these are all restraining factors for our economy. regarding the three - year forecast horizon, our expectations here have not changed overall since october. we expect that the gdp growth rate will gradually increase to 1. 5 – 2. 0 % in 2020 and to 2 – 3 % in 2022. successful implementation of national projects should provide the largest contribution to the increase in growth rates. this will support internal demand while external conditions remain a factor of uncertainty in the forecast. as regards oil prices. last week, the opec + countries reached a deal to extend oil production cuts until the end of march 2020. as of now, we stick to a conservative assumption for oil prices in our forecast : their reduction to 55 us dollars per barrel in 2020 and to 50 us dollars per barrel in 2021 and further on. we will adjust this opinion depending on, among other factors, future changes in the opec + agreements and global demand for energy commodities. as to the balance of payments, we have slightly adjusted some indicators for this year, taking into account the actual data available. let me remind you that the current account balance will 2 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches gradually decrease over the forecast horizon remaining sustainably positive : approximately to 3 % of gdp in 2020 and to 1 – 2 % of gdp in 2021. this is associated with oil price trends and external demand. the financial account balance of the private sector will shrink to about 1 % of