Sanctions have had a less severe impact on Russia’s GDP growth than low oil prices, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in its latest report on the Russian economy.
Between 2014 and 2018, sanctions slowed the growth of the Russian economy by an average of 0.2% per year, or one trillion rubles ($15 billion) in monetary terms. Yet the fall in global oil prices weakened the country’s GDP growth rate by an average of 0.65% ($48.75 billion) per year over the same period, according to the IMF’s annual Country Report.
Russia’s economic growth was further weakened by the country’s tight fiscal policy and restrictive monetary policy, accounting for 0.1 and 0.2% of lost growth, respectively.
The combined impact of sanctions, low oil prices, and Russia’s fiscal and monetary policies is almost 1.2% in lost economic growth per year, the RBC reported.
Over the five years between 2014 and 2018 Russian GDP grew by just 2.5%, down from a theoretical 3.5% had sanctions not been introduced and 5.9% had all of those factors not existed.
