OREANDA-NEWS  Even complete and effective import substitution will lead to a decrease in the standard of living, because for these purposes it is necessary to divert labor, and for investment — to maintain a high capital intensity of GDP. This conclusion was reached by the economists of the Department of Research and Forecasting of the Central Bank of Russia Maria Lymar, Alexander Reentovich and Andrey Sinyakov, who published the results of the study in the December issue of the scientific journal "Questions of Economics", which RBC got acquainted with.

They presented three scenarios for the near future — optimistic, neutral and negative. The downside was that none of them provides for the restoration of living standards until 2019 earlier than in 15 years.

In an optimistic scenario, the retired imports are easily replaced, and there are no losses when using domestic goods. To produce analogues of foreign goods, employees are removed from the production of their own products and reoriented.

At the same time, citizens will have to reduce consumption in order to ensure the accumulation of capital, and the restoration of living standards is postponed for at least ten years. Otherwise, in the absence of foreign investments, the state will have nowhere to take investment capital and finance long-term projects. As the authors of the article note, such a strategy, if all conditions are met, can eventually give a positive result.

The neutral option assumes incomplete import substitution, which is accompanied by difficulties. In general, the same factors apply in this variant as in the positive one, but consumption is reduced more and for a longer period, and the restoration of living standards is further postponed. In both cases, the state has to accumulate citizens' funds, and goods become less accessible.