Sanctions? Russian economy to overtake Germany’s by 2020 – report

Despite years of Western sanctions, Russia will become the world’s fifth-largest economy as early as next year, surpassing Germany and the UK, multinational bank Standard Chartered said in its long-term growth forecasts.

In a report outlining projections about the world economy up until 2030, the bank said that China is likely to unseat the US to become the world’s biggest economy at some point in the next year, when measured by a combination of purchasing-power-parity (PPP) exchange rates and nominal gross domestic product. It will be joined by the US, India, Japan, and Russia in the top five.

The top 10 countries will also include Germany, Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey, and the UK.

“By 2020, a majority of the world population will be classified as middle class. Asia will lead the increase in middle-class populations even as middle classes stagnate in the West,” said Standard Chartered researcher Madhur Jha.

The report predicted that Asian economies will grow significantly in the next decade, taking seven of the top 10 spots on the list of the world’s biggest economies by 2030.

Last week, the World Bank said in its economic outlook that it expects an increase in the growth rate of Russia’s GDP to 1.8 percent in 2020 and 2021. The bank reported that the Russian economy expanded at a 1.6-percent pace last year, experiencing “relatively low and stable inflation and increased oil production” despite the tightened economic sanctions.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has raised its forecast for Russia’s GDP growth in 2019 to 1.8 percent. The positive impact of rising world oil prices on the Russian economy would outweigh the negative effect of Washington’s sanctions, it said.

Meanwhile, the official figures from the Federal Statistics Office showed that Europe’s largest economy, Germany, slowed sharply in 2018. It grew by 1.5 percent last year, its slowest rate since 2013. A weaker global economy and problems in the car industry have been cited as contributing to the slowdown.

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