Business Watch
Just as resets can crash computers, the U.S.-Russian ‘reset’ has crashed relation between Washington and Moscow. In the end, the U.S./Russia reset was overloaded by the challenges posed by the so-called ‘Arab Spring’,Vladmir Putin’s return to the Kremlin, and his institution of a soft, selective crackdown on some Russian opposition elements.
Severstal, Russia's second-largest steel producer posted on Tuesday a fourth-quarter net loss of $150 million, underperforming analyst forecasts due to flagging steel prices and tepid global demand.
Russia (INDEXCF)’s benchmark equities gauge erased gains as commodities, including metals, retreated, weakening the outlook for producers.
Russian manufacturing expanded at the same pace in February as a month earlier, signaling that growth was “broadly maintained,” HSBC Holdings Plc. said.
Russia sold 50 percent of the bonds offered at an auction after canceling a planned sale, with the start of Euroclear Bank SA trading unable to prevent the nation’s debt from heading toward the worst month since May.
Weak external environment, elevated inflation, flat oil prices and sluggish domestic demand could postpone a pickup in growth in Russia towards the second half of 2013. Nevertheless, higher growth and lower inflation are projected to reduce poverty from 11.7 percent in 2012 to 11.2 percent in 2014, says the World Bank’s Russia Economic Report that launched today in Moscow.