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vortexmagus
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www.bloomberg.com]
Feel free to correct me. As far as I can tell, oil prices have been pretty closely linked with the value of the Ruble - as oil dropped in value, so did the Ruble. This is because a huge portion of Russian federal income is tied to these volatile resources.
Hilariously, this was never true. Pre-2004, Russian budget did not receive profits from oil exports, post-2004, the oil export taxes were raised significanty, but at the same time the fiscal policy was implemented for when oil prices exceeded certain limit, all the "extra" taxes were put into the stabilization fund (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabilization_Fund_of_the_Russian_Federation) that would be used in case oil prices drop. That's how on 2009 oil prices drop, Russian budget didn't budge. Now - it's the same. The RUB exchange rate spike in mid 2014 happened not because of oil prices drop, but because of financial sanctions timed perfectly with the free float of RUB exchange rate implemented by Russian central bank - our oil companies had to repay USD loans, weren't able to get money on international markets due to sanctions and had to purchase them on internal market - hence RUB rate spike. Some banks tried to speculate on this, were fucked by the central bank, deputy of the central bank was changed in the matter of HOURS, the situation was handled in a matter of two days and is stable since. Oil prices matter, of course, but not significantly.
So long story short, Saudi Arabia (OPEC) cannot withstand low oil prices, whilst Russia can. Currently we've got on our hands disastrous budget crisis in Venezuela and significant budget deficit in Saudi Arabia, both significant OPEC countries. While Russian 2017 budget has planned deficit of 3%, and that budget is designed for $40 oil price, so taking into account current and projected oil prices, the budget will be profitable by the end of the 2017.
I love the "Russian economy is dead on oil prices" myth though, because it makes people who believe it do stupid things.
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Putin said in his address to the Russian parliament in April 2001, calling for greater diversification of the Russian economy. At the time, oil and gas generated some 30 percent of federal budget revenues. In 2015, the figure reached 44 percent, according to the Finance ministry.
Notice how I've said oil revenues didn't go into federal budget before 2004? That's because they didn't. Dismantle of Yukos and jail sentence for Mikhail Khodorkovsky were the breaking point of this process, after which significant oil taxes and the above fiscal policy were implemented and oil tycoons started filling up the national budget. To illustrate this - federal budget income in 2004 was 3 429 bn RUB against 5 127 bn RUB in 2005 (1,5 growth in one year) and 15 000 bn RUB in 2014. Long story short, you can't compare 2001 and 2014 because in 2001, oil wasn't taxed. The numbers on budget and structure may be found on Russian Ministry of Finance website, I'm not sure if it has English version though. You should compare 2005 and 2015, and the dynamics are 70% to 44% in this way of comparison. Different story huh?
Notice how I didn't quote any fucking media articles while telling you this? Because fuck articles, research and knowledge is about data and analytics, not about articles written by shitheads. Not a single reporter knows his shit, otherwise they would earn more money doing that shit, not writing stupid articles.