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Russia's GDP growth rates to be under 1 % in 2014

"We believe that our main economic recovery forecast for 2014 - which we presented last year - is unlikely to materialize," Central Bank governor Elvira Nabiullina

© ITAR-TASS/Valery Sharifulin

MOSCOW, April 02. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia's Gross Domestic Product growth rates will be lower than 1% this year year, Central Bank governor Elvira Nabiullina said at the congress of the Association of Russian Banks on Wednesday.

"At present, we believe that our main economic recovery forecast for 2014 - which we presented last year - is unlikely to materialize. We expected the growth to be at 1.5 to 1.8%, but now we believe that growth rates are likely to slow down to below 1%," Nabiullina said.

Capital outflow from Russia in the first three months of the year exceeded the $20 billion forecast, Elvira Nabiullina added.

“It has already become clear that the de-facto capital outflow would considerable exceed our initial forecast of $20 billion for this year. Herewith, it is of huge importance to understand its essence,” Nabiullina said.

In her words, the occurrence embraces two flows. The first of them is money outflow by investors, while “another part of this is a result of conversion the population and companies’ funds into foreign currency that are on deposits, including in banks of Russia," she stressed.

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