Page 52 - RusRPTApr20

5.0 External Sector & Trade 5.1 External sector overview
Russia is expected to retain its trade surplus this year, although the current account surplus is also expected to halve from the $64.6bn earned in 2019 and the $113.7bn earned the year before that to something like $45bn in 2020 due to the collapse in the price of oil.
However, that fall will be mitigated by the concurrent fall in imports following the devaluation of the ruble. And that trend will also be helped by the population switching from spending to saving mode, which is their default position in a crisis that in turn pull in less imports.
Finally the government has been working hard to substitute goods that used to be imported prior to 2014 with domestically produced goods – foodstuff be chief amongst them.
It is too soon for the coronavirus crisis to show up in the data, but the most recent data shows the turnover of goods is stable. Russia had a trade surplus for goods of $13.7bn in January and $12.5bn in February, a par with a year earlier.
The export of goods was also largely unaffected and was worth $29.5bn in February versus $29.8bn in the same month a year earlier, while imports also remained stead rising a fraction from $16.5bn to $17bn over the same period.
All these numbers are expected to change radically in the coming months.
52 RUSSIA Country Report April 2020 www.intellinews.com