thus also for the entire first quarter of 2023: https://bit.ly/3GxtEaQ
In human terms: Russia imported the same amount of goods and services in the first 3 months of 2023 as in the first 3 months of last year: 86 vs. 89 billion dollars ($).
But exports fell from 168 billion dollars to exactly 110 billion dollars. That’s a drop of 35%.
BALANCE OF PAYMENTS CURRENT ACCOUNT
The current account had surpluses as follows:
- 1Q 21: + $22 billion
- 1Q 22: + $69 billion
- 1Q 22: + $18.6 billion
The data for the last 3 months of 2023 are as follows:
Jan / Feb / March 2023: + 7.1 / + 5.8 / + 5.7 billion $
The amount + $19 billion in 1/4 of the year is equal to the average monthly surplus in 2022. In 2023, this amount was collected for 3 months. But already December 2022 with a surplus of only +1.7 billion $ was a very poor result.
China, India and Turkey, which became new partners in the import of Russian energy raw materials (coal, gas, oil, petroleum products), improved significantly after the year-on-year drop in prices, but this did not help Russia.
Sanctions hit Russia in full in 2023, and despite the fact that oil export volumes even grew by +2% year-on-year, the value of exports plummeted.
It will very likely be a permanent phenomenon in the near future, and record surpluses of exports, current account balance of payments, growing tax and customs revenues of the Russian budget are a thing of the past. Record spending remains.
And exactly as we wrote in the article in January:
- the first to “break” the exchange rate of the Russian ruble (this year – 20% against €),
- second, interest rates will go up, which will save the falling exchange rate of the ruble,
- the third will go up (thanks to the “printing” of the ruble and the worsening of the exchange rate) inflation will go up.
Russia will get by with all of them already in 2023, and the government can redo the state budget after today, it will need a radical cut. And since war-aggression will not be cheaper, the population will suffer (pensions, social sector).
If anything besides diversifying the EU’s energy sources was the goal of the sanctions, it was precisely this: less funding at home in Russia for war and to keep the population calm.
Good old Rony armed Russia and now the same will happen to the Russians. And it didn’t take that long either. This is not an easy topic, but the conclusions from the observed trends are all the more clear. Russia is suffering significantly from the sanctions, and it does not look like it will turn around by chance.
In normal times, it is rational to make a comparison of 5-10 years, but before 2022, these were years without aggression and without expenditure on aggression.
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