REUTERS
Leading global investment bank JPMorgan has downgraded its GDP growth forecast for Russia in 2016 from 1.8% to 1%, Russian information agency TASS reported referring to Bloomberg.
At the same time, the Russian Ministry of Economic Development projected in its updated forecast, published in May, that Russian GDP may decline by 2.8% in 2015, whereas a 2.3% growth in 2016 and 2017 is predicted with further acceleration to 2.4% in 2018.
Russia's GDP in the physical terms shrank by 4.6% in the second quarter compared to the same period last year, according to the Russian Federal State Statistics Service. This is the steepest drop in six years, marking the country's first recession since the financial crisis in 2009, according to Bloomberg.
Earlier, Russian Minister of Economic Development Alexei Ulyukayev announced that the economic situation in the country was expected to improve in the third quarter of 2015 and Russia's GDP would not fall by more than 2.6-2.8% in all 12 months of 2015.