“We are losing about $40 billion a year because of geopolitical sanctions and about $90 billion to $100 billion due to a 30% drop in oil prices,” Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said at an international economic conference in Moscow, Interfax reported. “When I am asked what I, the finance minister, can say about the ruble rate prospects … I say: Watch oil prices.”
Siluanov said capital flight from Russia is expected to reach $130 billion this year.
The ruble, the national currency, has experienced its biggest drop in years over the last two months, losing 30% of its value. That has added significantly to a volatile inflation rate officially projected to be close to 10% by the end of the year, officials say. Some private economists say the inflation figure could be twice that high.
“The sanctions over Ukraine and especially the continuing drop in world oil prices are painful enough, but they are by far not the biggest problem of the long-stagnating Russian economy,” Mikhail Delyagin, a leading Russian economist and chairman of the Globalization Problems Institute, a Moscow-based think tank, said in an interview.
“Our economy already showed signs of skidding back in 2011 when oil prices were quite favorable. The main problems of Russia are not sanctions or oil prices but its chronic corruption problems, the lawlessness of monopolies and the utter inability of the state to properly manage anything, including the economy.”
Read More; http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-russia-oil-sanctions-20141124-story.html
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