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it by 9% on the month to $215.1mn in August, as seen by PRIME in materials of the Indian Commerce and Industry Ministry on October 21. The August imports became India’s record monthly amount since March 2018 when the country bought $481mn worth of Russian diamonds. In January–August, imports of Russian diamonds rose by 29% on the year to $863mn.
5.2.2 Current account dynamics
The current account surplus for 9M23 amounted to $41 billion, which is $155 billion lower than the figure for 9M22. In September, due to an increase in exports of goods, as well as a decrease in imports of services, the trade current account surplus came close to $10 billion, which is the highest monthly figure since the beginning of 2023. An important factor in the observed dynamics was the decrease in the volume of dividends accrued by Russian companies in favor of non-residents, which supported the balance of primary and secondary income in 3Q23. At the same time, the Bank of Russia improved its assessment of the current account for July-August (by almost $5 billion in total), both by increasing export estimates and reducing import estimates. Taking this into account, we do not rule out that the estimate for September will be adjusted upward later.
The surplus in the current account of the balance of payments of the Russian Federation in January — June 2023 amounted to $24.3bn against $148.1bn in January — June 2022. The key factor behind this dynamics was a weakening of the trade balance mainly as a result of the deterioration of prices for the main goods of the Russian export.
Exports of goods declined by 31.9% to $208.5bn mainly as a result of a drop in world prices for the main goods of the Russian export.
Imports of goods continued to recover owing to increased imports from friendly countries and totaled $150.9bn, having increased by 19.3%.
The deficit in the balance on external trade in services grew 2.2 times to $15.8bn due to both a decline in exports and increase in imports of services.
Exports of services decreased by 19.1% to $20.2bn. The value of transport services to non-residents dropped by 4.7% relative to the 2022 figure. The volume of other services to non-residents declined by 37.0% due to a reduction in exports of telecommunications, computer and information services, as well as other business services. Contrastingly, travel services to non-residents increased by 41.5% to $3.5bn.
Imports of services rose by 12.0% to $36.0bn. The key driver was a revival of the tourist flow from Russia abroad, which made imports of travel services
62 RUSSIA Country Report November 2023 www.intellinews.com