Russia's capital outflow reaches 151.5 bln dollars in 2014

Russia's net capital outflow more than doubled year-on-year in 2014, reaching 151.5 billion U.S. dollars, the Russian Central Bank said Friday.

Amid worsening debt refinancing conditions due to western sanctions against Russia, external debt payments by banks and companies have largely triggered the growth of capital outflow in the private sector in 2014, said the bank.

Nearly 20-billion-dollar of the total outflow is short-term, in consideration of the liquidity support of the Russia's financial regulator to the banks on a repayable basis, RIA Novosti quoted the bank as saying. The bank's estimate last December of the outflow stood at a total of 134 billion U.S. dollars.

"In 2015, we expect the volume of external debt payments to decrease, which should have a positive impact on the capital outflow indicators," said the bank's press service.

The bank's preliminary report done on the basic scenario of Russia's macroeconomic development showed that the capital outflow is estimated at 118 billion U.S. dollars in 2015, 75 billion in 2016 and 53 billion in 2017.

The bank also released data showing foreign trade surplus going up 2 percent to 185.6 billion dollars in 2014.

Moreover, Russia's current account surplus rose by 67 percent year-on-year in 2014 to 56.7 billion dollars, while the banks forecast stands at 63 billion.

As Russia's international reserves contracted by 9 percent to 385.7 billion in December last year, statistics on Dec. 31 of 2014 showed that the country's monetary base fell to 9,139.8 billion rubles (about 140 billion U.S. dollars).

Under pressure brought by the slump of world oil prices and western sanctions, various international rating agencies have recently downgraded Russia's economic ratings due to ruble's weakness and the ailing economy.

Nevertheless, partner of the GeoNedra Scientific Analytical Center Andrei Ivanov was generally positive about Russia's economic situation in an interview with Xinhua.

Russian economy has become very much crisis-proof over the past 15 years during which the country witnessed massive capital outflow, investors' mistrust and other negative factors, Ivanov said.

"Russia will overcome the current difficulties similarly in pain, but it will definitely survive the crisis," he noted. Endite