The European Union, the United States and other countries apply severe economic sanctions to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which led to significant cuts in Russian oil and gas exports to those destinations.
But export volumes of Russian crude “did not change” in fact. Russia has managed to dodge the impact of sanctions and the loss of income by increasing its exports to other countries, including India and China, the World Bank noted.
The agency expects the Russian economy to contract just 0.2% this year, according to the updated forecast. This is an upward correction of 3.1 percentage points with respect to the January estimate.
In its report, the World Bank also revised upwards its forecast for the world economy, which is expected to grow 2.1% this year.
This improvement is due to “substantial increases in projections for China and, to a lesser extent, for Russia,” the Washington-based institution explained.
In the case of China, the GDP expansion forecast went from 4.3% to 5.6% this year.
The United States should avoid a recession this year and grow 1.1% (+0.6 percentage points above the January data). The euro zone should expand 0.4%; in January the bank expected no growth.