{"id":3706,"date":"2025-09-16T15:32:29","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T14:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3706"},"modified":"2025-09-16T15:32:30","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T14:32:30","slug":"russias-almost-unobserved-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3706","title":{"rendered":"Russia’s (almost) unobserved economy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Russia is causing these days – for well-known reasons – almost no headlines or analysis on its pure economic development in Western analysis. An exemption is the important work done by BOFIT in Helsinki which is an organization that still provides the world with updated analysis on the Russian economy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obvious – and logical \u2013 economic slowdown <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to BOFIT (The Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies), Russian economic growth remained slow also in July – but still the term “growth” is used in their latest report, and not the expression of a recession (https:\/\/www.bofit.fi\/en\/monitoring\/weekly\/2025\/vw202537_1\/<\/a> ). However, according to other judgments, Russia could now be on the edge of a recession or already slightly in it \u2013 an interpretation that recently partly has been rejected, for example, by the Russian central bank CBR (https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/markets\/europe\/russian-central-bank-cautiously-cuts-key-rate-by-100-bps-17-2025-09-12\/<\/a> and https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/news\/world\/2108234\/russia-economy-meltdown-central-bank-gdp-tanking<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, the Russian economy looks very much like stagnating these days, reflecting a deterioration from previous more positive growth numbers (Q2:+1.1%; Q1:1.4% yoy, but down by 0,6% in the course of the first half of 2025 according to Reuters and the CBR).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly, existing sluggish economic growth is mainly referred to still existing high interest rates as the main medicine against very high inflation and their negative impact on non-military investment. Poor economic results for many Russian companies also had \u2013 and probably still have – a negative impact on investment plans. On the other hand, government spending continues to grow and will do so in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Altogether, the non-military part of the Russian economy has more recently \u2013 according to BOFIT – mainly been driven by private consumption. This is obviously confirmed by statistical numbers for retail sales and services \u2013 a development that is to some extent supported by relatively low unemployment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Measured from the production side it can be summarized that industrial production remains more or less stagnating with rising production of commodities and shrinking output of quite some manufacturing goods \u2013 but with positive numbers for certain manufactured products such as transport and electronic equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Summary: <\/strong>When studying forecasts on the Russian GDP, stagnation or in the best case only a very weak increase seems to be on the cards for 2025, indicating some further weakening in the forthcoming quarters and probably no visibly improved performance next year. But uncertainty \u2013 also statistical? – remains high in 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hubert Fromlet<\/em><\/strong>
Affiliate Professor at the School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russia is causing these days – for well-known reasons – almost no headlines or analysis on its pure economic development in Western analysis. An exemption is the important work done by BOFIT in Helsinki which is an organization that still provides the world with updated analysis on the Russian economy.  Obvious – and logical \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10503,13621],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-emerging-markets","category-russia"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\r\nRussia's (almost) unobserved economy - China Research<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogg.lnu.se\/china-research\/?p=3706\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Russia's (almost) unobserved economy - China Research\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Russia is causing these days – for well-known reasons – almost no headlines or analysis on its pure economic development in Western analysis. 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