RUSSIA ECONOMICS
Analyst
Evgeny Gavrilenkov
Former Investment Bank Chief EconomistDatabanks
Recent Country Insights
Russia: a brief market watch
RUSSIA ECONOMICS · In Brief · 11 Sep 2025
The ruble's performance on the FX market has been a major talking point over the past couple of weeks, with its sudden 5.7% depreciation against the dollar since early September, hovering around USD/RUB 85 in recent days. Fundamentally, this isn't surprising, as the ruble remains as strong in rea...
The federal budget deficit is expected to surpass the revised target
RUSSIA ECONOMICS · In Brief · 09 Sep 2025
According to the Ministry of Finance's 8M25 budget execution statistics, total revenues increased by only 3.0% year-on-year, covering about 61.6% of the adjusted annual plan. The original plan projected oil-and-gas (O&G) revenues at R10.9 trln, but this was revised down to R8.3 trln. Due to a str...
Russian macro: With the economy persistently slowing, the CBR has to act
RUSSIA ECONOMICS · Report · 08 Sep 2025
In our June macroeconomic forecast, we revised Russia's 2025 full year GDP growth outlook down to 2.0%, with a slightly better figure of 2.4% for next year, expecting a "muddling through" scenario. We noted that the growth model that emerged during the pandemic in 2020 and solidified amidst the 2...
The economy appears to be slowing down
RUSSIA ECONOMICS · In Brief · 05 Sep 2025
Russia's recent w-o-w inflation data showed a continuously deflationary trend, with consumer prices falling by 0.08% in the week ending September 1. Combining this with prior weekly inflation data suggests that August experienced around 0.25% m-o-m deflation, potentially lowering y-o-y inflation ...
Economic performance looks increasingly unimpressive
RUSSIA ECONOMICS · In Brief · 28 Aug 2025
According to Rosstat, the output of the five basic sectors, a monthly proxy for overall economic activity, grew y-o-y by just 0.2% in July and 0.9% in the first seven months of 2025, indicating a rapid slowdown. Industrial production increased by 0.7% in July and 0.8% in 7M25, though July marked ...
Russia: a brief market watch
RUSSIA ECONOMICS · In Brief · 28 Aug 2025
Demand for OFZ has declined recently as many investors are taking profits, with long-term yields falling below 14% and further drops appearing uncertain, even with a potential 200 bps rate cut by the CBR in September. Market participants are also cautious about additional supply from Minfin due t...
Economy decelerates in search of new growth drivers
RUSSIA ECONOMICS · In Brief · 15 Aug 2025
Rosstat reported that in 2H25, GDP grew by 1.1% y-o-y, and the figure was even less impressive than the shocking 1.4% y-o-y growth in 1Q25. It looks as though the economy grew by 1.2-1.3% y-o-y in 1H25 with diminishing chances of growing above 2.0% this year. Moreover, one cannot rule out a furth...
Russia: a brief market watch
RUSSIA ECONOMICS · In Brief · 14 Aug 2025
The Russian markets turned into a moderately positive mood after the announcement of the US-Russia summit in Alaska. Despite that investors remain skeptical regarding a ceasefire in Ukraine in the near term, some of them hope for a kind of progress in bilateral relations between Washington and Mo...
Federal budget revenues may fall short amid disinflation and a strong ruble
RUSSIA ECONOMICS · In Brief · 11 Aug 2025
In the seven days ending on August 4, Rosstat reported weekly deflation accelerated to 0.13% w-o-w (versus 0.5% deflation in the previous seven days). Rosstat also reported that the MTD deflation reached 0.07% as of August 4 while the YTD inflation fell to 4.37%. Given that the MTD inflation on J...