The article analyses the short-term effects of aggregate economic sentiment on the expected GDP growth in Russia based on the results of regular large-scale surveys of business activity of the Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation for the period 1998-2020. The main purpose of the study is to substantiate the predictive value of the opinions of economic agents in expanding macroeconomic information, including in crisis periods. The authors calculate a composite economic sentiment indicator (ESI), which combines quarterly information for the analysed period on 18 indicators of surveys with a sample of about 24,000 organizations of all size in basic kinds of economic activity, and 5,000 consumers in all Russian regions. The authors prove the possibility of using a vector autoregression model (VAR) with dummy variables to measure the relationship between GDP growth and ESI time series. Scenario estimates of GDP growth until the end of 2021 are based on the expected impulses in the ESI dynamics at the end of 2020, which differ in the amplitude and duration of their impact on economic growth, primarily due to the coronavirus effect. According to the results, under all possible scenarios for the development of business trends, national economic growth can exceed the level of the end of 2019, starting from the third quarter of 2021