Russian economy has not actually reacted to a slowdown of global economic growth, but it resulted in a certain drop in Russian exports, Russian Minister of Economic Development Maxim Oreshkin said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV Channel on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank meeting in Washington.
"Russia is thankfully affected to a smaller degree," he pointed out. Russia "has a traditional channel of influence" - commodity prices, the minister noted.
"While oil prices were above $70 a barrel last year, now they amount to $60 or less," he said. But the "Russian economy has not actually reacted to that," Oreshkin said. "We have a fiscal rule, we have a mechanism safeguarding us from fluctuations in the commodities market situation," TASS cited the Russian minister as saying.
"Therefore, our economy feels itself confident, even despite such adverse dynamics," he said.
At the same time, he noted that "Russia is nevertheless an element of the global economy." Therefore, "deceleration of global trends affects our exports," Oreshhkin noted. "We see our export indicators are weak this year, particularly because of this globally poor economic situation," the minister of economic development concluded.
