Informal Economy in National Accounts of Russia

Informal activities as a part of non-observed economy play significant role in economy of Russia. The share of informal economy consists about 8% of gross domestic product. As the share of informal economy is high, it is very important to measure it precisely as possible for achieving exhaustive and quality estimates of GDP. The purpose of this paper is to review the experience on measuring the informal economy carried out by the Federal State Statistics Service of Russian Federation in the context of compilation of the national accounts. It focuses on describing the methods and data sources used to measure the informal activities and includes estimates of the important indicators of informal sector. The first sample survey of individual entrepreneurs was realized in Russia in 2007. The results of this survey allow defining more precisely not only the list of the informal kinds of activities but the impact them on the overall macroeconomic picture. The paper discusses problems and limitations of the current estimates of the informal sector as well as prospects of further work on improvement measuring the informal economy based on the recommendation of SNA 2008.