Moscow is seeking to hide the impact of the sanctions imposed by the United States and Western countries, as the Russian authorities have stopped publishing economic data related to its banks, oil imports and debt, in an attempt to hide the impact of Western sanctions imposed on Moscow in response to its invasion of Ukraine.
The Wall Street Journal said that Russia has in recent days stopped publishing data on government debt, trade statistics and oil production.
The newspaper also noted that the central bank has limited the amount of financial information that domestic banks have to publish regularly, while Russian lawmakers are working to legislate a law banning lenders from sharing data with foreign countries.
The paper asserts that the increasing blackout on economic data is part of the Russian authorities’ efforts to protect the economy and local businesses from further exposure to Western sanctions.
She noted that the limited data coming out of Russia means that Washington and its allies will be less aware of whether their sanctions are affecting the Russian economy, making it more difficult to find new targets and direct future sanctions packages.
“The Russians are trying to hide their economic information…there is a ban on Russian media and now the same applies to access to statistics,” said IIF Deputy Chief Economist Elena Rybakova.
The sanctions have prevented Moscow from accessing large parts of the Western financial infrastructure, as experts predict a huge recession accompanied by severe inflation, and a significant rise in unemployment amid the emigration of Western companies.
Last week, a branch of the Russian Energy Ministry that issues monthly data on oil production and exports said it would limit “the dissemination of information that can be used as additional pressure on the Russian market and its participants,” according to the Russian state news agency, TASS.
TASS said that the distribution of monthly crude oil production data, as well as data on fuel oil shipments from Russian refineries and gas processing plants to domestic and export markets, has been suspended indefinitely.
The Wall Street Journal stresses that such information is critical at a time when crude oil prices are rising.
She noted that while oil data monitors have more than one way to gather statistics, including tanker tracking and information from traders, the lack of timely Russian official figures will make it difficult to monitor global supplies.
Analysts, with whom the Russian Central Bank cooperates, expected, on Thursday, that the gross domestic product will decline by 9.2% and the inflation rate will reach 22% in 2022 in Russia, while the same bank expects serious economic difficulties once morest the backdrop of international sanctions imposed on Moscow.
Every month, the Central Bank publishes a research that it conducts in cooperation with experts. They seemed more pessimistic in April than they were in March in terms of economic growth due to the waves of sanctions hitting Russia once morest the backdrop of its invasion of Ukraine.
These figures are more pessimistic than those issued by the International Monetary Fund, which forecast a contraction of Russian gross domestic product by 8.5% this year.