Economics News

Russian banks hit by Global Panic

The Russian stock exchange has lost one sixth of its capital value since the beginning of August, with the RTS dollar index dropping by 18%. Although the market is now considered to be stabilized, the Russian stock exchange is affected by global instability which has affected much of Europe and the USA.

Russian are still big spenders abroad

According to a Citibank survey, Russians now have a higher spend abroad than they did before the global economic crisis in 2008. The survey predicts that Russians will spend $40 billion (24 billion GBP) by the end of 2011 and it represents 3% of the GDP. The most popular countries for consumer spend are: the USA, where they spent 16% of overseas consumer spend, followed by Italy- 16% and in third place the UK, accounting 8% of spend abroad.