If a barrel of Brent crude will drop to $ 40 or below, it will be an incentive for reform in Russia and destabilizie the country’s financial system. To such conclusion economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
The Agency reminds that at low oil prices, Russia introduced a flat tax scale created by the Stabilization Fund. More than 10 years of continuous growth in oil prices brought Russia 2.1 trillion dollars, says Bloomberg. However, over the last eight years, the Russian economy grew more than 5 percent per year, and in the last two years there has been a decline.
Cheap oil forces the Russian authorities to carry out reforms, says chief economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch on Russia and the CIS Vladimir Osakovsky. “Whenever oil prices were low, the government has started to reform,” he says. Against the background of falling oil prices to lows since 2004, the historical perspective indicates a shift to more liberal policies, the economist said.
So far, the crisis has created little incentive for such a scenario, says the Agency. The Russian government had acted carefully, slightly adjusting economic policies and rejecting calls for a wider restructuring of the system.
18 July on the London exchange ICE Brent crude oil is trading around the level of 48 USD per barrel, a barrel of WTI costs $ 46.
