September 2020. Russian Federation: trends and forecasts
2 October 2020
The Russian economy faced challenging external economic conditions in the first half of this year. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an unprecedented decline in global economic activity and volume of international trade. Lockdown restrictions considerably weakened consumer and investment demand and fostered a slowdown in inflation along with a fall in energy prices. These conditions compelled monetary regulators in both developed and developing countries to ease their monetary policy, while fiscal bodies unveiled large-scale anti-crisis packages to help the population and business
The Russian economy faced challenging external economic conditions in the first half of this year. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an unprecedented decline in global economic activity and volume of international trade. Lockdown restrictions considerably weakened consumer and investment demand and fostered a slowdown in inflation along with a fall in energy prices. These conditions compelled monetary regulators in both developed and developing countries to ease their monetary policy, while fiscal bodies unveiled large-scale anti-crisis packages to help the population and business.
June–July 2020 performance indicators communicated the beginning of a recovery in global economic activity amid an easing of lockdown restrictions and companies resuming work, primarily in the service sector. Due to differences in the epidemiological situation and government support amongst countries, this process has been gradual and varied. The EDB’s base case assumes a slow recovery of the world’s largest economies with unused capacity at production facilities in 2020–2022 to drive only moderate external demand for Russian exports in the medium term. Under such conditions, inflationary pressure from abroad will remain weak.