Damage to national industry due to the anti-Russian sanctions may amount to $20 billion, the Acting Minister of Industry and Trade, Gleb Nikitin, said in an interview with the RBC TV channel.
"Damage may amount to $20 billion in connection with the higher costs of refinancing on the domestic market and failure to receive refinancing for the relevant loans overseas," he said.
Nikitin added that sanctions against Russia were largely aimed against such sectors as oil and gas and defense technology, and these sectors demonstrate a slight growth despite the recession. "All the tasks set earlier within the framework of these sectors have been delivered in full scope," he noted.
According to him, Russian industry has passed the peak of negative expectations.
"Nearly all branches of industry, except for the chemical sector, demonstrated growth in June 2015. In all other sectors we saw growth in May," Nikitin noted. "The peak of the negative expectations and the peak of the problems have passed in this sense, unless certain additional external shocks and impacts appear," TASS cited the Acting Minister as saying.
"We do not see a large-scale shutting down of plants," he said. But according to him, it is still early to relax, "we are working on anti-crisis measures for the next half of the year."
