Economy of Russia

Russian Economy: Industry, Foreign Trade and Natural Resources

Russia is on its way towards integration into the world's economy and stable economic development. In the early 1990s Russia confirmed its adherence to market economy by creating the legislative basis for market economy development. Such changes, however, negatively affected the country's economy, resulting in significant decline of all indexes. Nevertheless, after experiencing great difficulties, in 1999 Russian economy began to recover and the country entered the period of steady rise in economy. The GDP growth caused the increasing confidence among entrepreneurs and consumers. Foreign investments inflow increased while the capital outflow practically stopped. By the end of 2006 the GDP growth amounted to 6.8% as opposed to 6.4% in the previous year. Russia's GDP approached those of Great Britain, Italy and France. Growing export volume, the increase in labor productivity and effective use capital smoothed the negative effects of previous years. Industrial production rose by one third, machine building output increased 1.5 times. Modernization of major means of production, personnel qualification growth, energy consumption decrease, introduction of innovations are under way. The most attention is paid to strategic industries: metallurgy (3.4 thousand enterprises) and machine-building. Defense industry comprises 1,700 enterprises. 370 enterprises (over 150 plants and 200 research institutes) constitute aviation-engineering complex. Russian territory is divided into 12 major economic areas:

Northern, Northern-Western, Central, Volga-Vyatka, Central-Chernozemye, Volga, North Caucasus, Urals, Western Siberia, Eastern Siberia, Far East, and Kaliningrad Region.