{"id":48169,"date":"2025-07-30T18:41:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T18:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/48169\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T18:41:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T18:41:18","slug":"imf-slashes-russias-economic-forecast-as-wartime-growth-slows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/48169\/","title":{"rendered":"IMF Slashes Russia\u2019s Economic Forecast as Wartime Growth Slows"},"content":{"rendered":"

The International Monetary Fund has downgraded<\/a> its forecast for the Russian economy, signaling the end of a short-lived wartime growth surge and forecasting a return to stagnation.<\/p>\n

In its July World Economic Outlook Update, the IMF projects Russia\u2019s GDP will grow just 0.9% in 2025, a steep drop from last year\u2019s 4.1% expansion. The revised forecast marks a 0.6 percentage point downgrade from the IMF\u2019s April report \u2014 the largest cut among all major economies.<\/p>\n

The world economy is expected to grow by 3% this year and 3.1% in 2026.<\/p>\n

Developing nations are forecast to grow at roughly 4% annually, while Russia\u2019s economy is expected to edge up by just 1% in 2026.<\/p>\n

Over the next two years, Russia\u2019s growth rate will be less than half that of the U.S., which is projected to grow by 3.9%, and will trail far behind China (9%) and India (6.4% annually in 2025 and 2026).<\/p>\n

The IMF attributes the slowdown to tighter economic policies and falling global oil prices, which have eroded the key revenue streams that helped prop up Russia\u2019s wartime economy.<\/p>\n

The average price of Brent crude is forecast to drop 13.9% this year to $68.18 per barrel, with a further decline to $64.33 expected in 2026.<\/p>\n

Petya Koeva-Brooks, deputy director of the IMF\u2019s research department, said Russia\u2019s performance in the first quarter of 2025 fell well short of expectations.<\/p>\n

According to state statistics agency Rosstat, year-on-year growth dropped to 1.4%, down from 4.5% in the previous quarter and sharply below the 5.4% growth seen in the same period last year.<\/p>\n

On a quarterly basis, the economy contracted for the first time since 2022. Non-defense sectors began declining in February and have now registered four consecutive months of contraction.<\/p>\n

Those sectors had shrunk 0.9% year-on-year by late June, according to estimates from the government-affiliated Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Forecasting.<\/p>\n

Top Russian officials are beginning to acknowledge the economic risks.<\/p>\n

At the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in June, Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov warned<\/a> that the country was \u201con the edge of an economic downturn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina delivered an even starker message, saying<\/a> that the resources which had fueled wartime growth \u201chave truly been exhausted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nabiullina pointed to labor shortages, idle production capacity and dwindling reserves from the National Wealth Fund.<\/p>\n

The fund\u2019s liquid assets have reportedly fallen by two-thirds since the start of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The International Monetary Fund has downgraded its forecast for the Russian economy, signaling the end of a short-lived…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":["post-48169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}