RUSSIA ECONOMICS
Analyst
Evgeny Gavrilenkov
Former Investment Bank Chief EconomistDatabanks
Recent Country Insights
Russian macro: a difficult year ahead
RUSSIA ECONOMICS · Forecast · 18 Mar 2025
According to Rosstat’s publications, after having soared in December 2024, the Russian economy posted comparatively unimpressive results in January, as the output of the five basic sectors grew by 3.1% y-o-y. In December, it grew by 7.5%. This indicator is a monthly measure of combined activities...
Revised balance of payments statistics shed some light on recent FX trends and budget revenues
RUSSIA ECONOMICS · In Brief · 13 Mar 2025
The Central Bank just published its flash estimate of the key constituencies of the balance of payments for 2M25 and revised data for 4Q24. The revisions appeared quite significant, and the CBR referred to some updated foreign trade statistics it recently collected. We recently mentioned on sever...
Russia: a brief market watch
RUSSIA ECONOMICS · In Brief · 13 Mar 2025
The Russian market remains positive, assuming the possibility of a peace settlement in Ukraine. The latter encouraged investors to bet on further strengthening of the ruble, and it went from R/$89 to R/$85 after the start of negotiations between the US and Ukraine in Saudi Arabia. However, other ...
More evidence on growth deceleration in January, but questions remain
RUSSIA ECONOMICS · In Brief · 06 Mar 2025
In addition to recently published industrial statistics that hinted at the possibility of a sudden deceleration of economic growth, Rosstat recently provided more color on the matter. According to the statistical service, the output of the five basic sectors (B5 represents industry, agriculture, ...
Russia: a brief market watch
RUSSIA ECONOMICS · In Brief · 27 Feb 2025
The Russian market moved up on the wave of optimism regarding the potential resolution of the conflict in Ukraine. Many investors think it may happen in the coming months, and some sanctions on Russia could be removed in the aftermath. Moreover, this factor is treated as disinflationary, which ma...
Russian industry decelerates sharply in January
RUSSIA ECONOMICS · In Brief · 27 Feb 2025
Rosstat reported that the industrial output was up by 2.2% y-o-y in January, which appeared unexpected as it was up by 8.2% y-o-y in December. Seasonally and calendar-adjusted industrial output contracted by 3.2% m-o-m. It might be too early to say that growth trends changed abruptly last month, ...
Revised 2023-2024 macro data show steady growth, but things could change this year
RUSSIA ECONOMICS · Report · 18 Feb 2025
According to Rosstat’s flash estimate, the country’s GDP grew by 4.1% and reached R200,039.5 bln, implying it climbed to $2,155 bln in dollar terms. Both the nominal figure and the growth rate appeared slightly higher than we anticipated—not least due to revisions of the historical data. We expec...
Russia: a brief market watch
RUSSIA ECONOMICS · In Brief · 13 Feb 2025
Market sentiment improved significantly in the past two weeks as investors started to speculate on a possibility of de-escalation in Ukraine. The conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin was considered an important indicator of the high likelihood of this scenario. As a result, the ruble appr...
Federal budget performance in January hints that economic growth gradually decelerates, inflation to remain high
RUSSIA ECONOMICS · In Brief · 12 Feb 2025
The Ministry of Finance reported that the Federal Budget was in deficit in January despite the fact that its total revenues grew by 11.4%, i.e., above inflation, albeit not much. Oil-and-gas (O&G) revenues were up by 16.8% y-o-y, while non-O&G revenues increased by 9.3% y-o-y, which was below inf...