the international monetary fund raised its 2023 economic growth forecast for russia on tuesday predicting that deficitfueled government spending will help counteract the growing costs of its war in ukraine but the russian invasion is expected to have a significant impact over the medium term with the imf predicting the russian economy will be about seven percent smaller by 2027 than prewar forecasts would have indicated imf chief economist pierreolivier gourinchas said during a press briefing ahead of the release of the world economic outlook weo report on tuesday after contracting by 21 percent last year the imf now sees russias economy growing by 07 percent this year up 04 percentage point from a previous forecast in january the russian economy is then forecast to grow by 13 percent in 2024 down 08 percentage point from the earlier forecast the imf raised its forecast for 2023 after concluding that russia has been able to maintain quite a bit of momentum in the economy by taking for instance very strong fiscal measures in 2022 and 2023 gourinchas said at the end of last year a lot of that fiscal spending was also related to the military expenditures the imfs deputy director in the research department petya koeva brooks told reporters during the press briefing but more broadly i think that russia has been using the fiscal space that they have in order to also provide support to the economy she said the imf expects russias budget deficit will reach 62 percent of gdp this year according to a spokesperson this would be almost three times the size of last years budget deficit russias current account surplus is also predicted to decline sharply to 36 percent of gdp this year from 103 percent a year earlier due to much weaker terms of trade lower energy volumes and a recovery of imports the spokesperson said