Page 42 - RusRPTAug20

5.0​ External Sector & Trade 5.1​ External sector overview
Russia’s exports have been decaying slowly in the last few years, falling from around $400bn in June 2018 to $370bn in May 2020​. However, trade volumes plunged in May and June falling to $327bn and $316bn respectively.
However, the make up of export countries, at least at the top of the table, has not changed much. China has become Russia’s biggest trade partner and consistently accounts for $60bn, or around 13% of Russia’s exports. The Netherlands (Russian companies domiciled abroad), Germany and Turkey take up the next three places in that order with 9.5%, 6% and 5% respectively.
The story is the same with imports. Russia was regularly importing around $200bn a month in 2018 which even grew modestly in the first months of this year to just under $230bn. However, as the coronacrisis got underway in March imports fell back to $200bn in May and June.
Again the composition of the trade partners has not changed much with China being the biggest partner accounting for $53.8bn or 22.8% to the total. The next more important countries are Germany, the US and Belarus, with 10.5%, 5.5% and 5% respectively.
Of interest is Ukraine which continues to account for 1.3% of Russia’s exports worth $4.82bn in June and 1.8% of imports worth $4.22bn. Exports to Ukraine have fallen significantly from $10.4bn (2.2% of total trade) in Jun 2018, while imports are down from $5.63bn (2.2%) in the same year. Ukraine has gone from having a large trade deficit with Russia to a more or less balanced trade account now.
42​ RUSSIA Country Report​ August 2020 ​ ​www.intellinews.com