People wearing face masks to protect against the coronavirus disease wait for a bus at a bus stop in the town of Chekhov, some 70 km outside Moscow, on August 11, 2020.Russia’s economy contracted by 8.5 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, the state statistics agency said Tuesday in its first assessment of the impact of the coronavirus and an oil crisis.
Rosstat’s figure for the second quarter was within the central bank’s forecast of between 8 and 10 percent, while the government had predicted a 9 percent reduction in economic activity.Russia had seen its economy pick up towards the end of 2019, while economic growth over the year as a whole was a sluggish 1.3 percent.
Those hopes were crushed by an oil crisis that began in March. Russia and Saudi Arabia launched a price war, dealing a severe blow to Russia’s economy dependent on exports of oil and gas. The Russian economy has been less badly hit by the virus than some countries due to its smaller service sector, according to economists.
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