Russia will grow less than expected this year. This was announced today by the Central Bank of Moscow, specifying that the Federation's GDP for 2014 will show growth of less than 1%.
“At the moment we believe that realizing the 2014 growth forecast that we presented last year is rather unlikely – said Governor Elvira Nabiullina -. We thought the growth would be between 1,5 and 1,8%, but now it is more likely to be less than 1%”.
The recent military operations in Crimea and the subsequent sanctions by the USA and the EU against Russia have probably weighed decisively on the revision of the estimates, given that only in mid-February Nabiullina was still speaking of a growth rate in the 1,5-1,8 range, XNUMX%.
At the end of March, however, Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev had forecast growth of 0,6% for this year, with capital outflows amounting to 100 billion dollars. Lastly, according to former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, the increase in GDP will be "close to zero", but the disappointing result would only be the price of "an independent foreign policy".
The Russian economy, already in difficulty due to the weak ruble and the drop in investments, was also damaged by the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula on the stock market side, with the Moscow listing losing around six percentage points in March alone.
Last week the World Bank raised the possibility of a 1,8% recession in Russia following the Ukrainian crisis.
