Pressured by the western sanctions and the lower oil prices, Russian economy shows more signs of weakness. Real wages and personal incomes at the end of 2014 fell year over year for the first time since 2009. Investments continue to fall for 12 consecutive months. Russian international reserves are lower than during the global financial crisis 2008-09. Rised interest rates makes more difficult to make credit payments, overdues reached new historical highs.
Revised forecasts for Russian GDP in 2015 are -3.0% and -2.9% (IMF and The World Bank, accordingly).
Source: Short-term indicators for Russian economy, January 2015
The WTO General Council meets as the Trade Policy Review Body to undertake trade policy reviews of Members under the TPRM and to consider the Director-General's regular reports on trade policy developement. The TPRB is thus open to all WTO Members. The current chair is Ms. Irene B. K. YOUNG (Hong Kong, China). Event Holder: World Trade Organization Source of data: Merchandise trade matrix, imports and exports of total all products, annual, 1995-2014, WTO statistical data sets, 1948-2014
Surveillance of national trade policies is a fundamentally important activity running throughout the work of the WTO. At the centre of this work is the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM). All WTO members are reviewed, the frequency of each country’s review varying according to its share of world trade. Event Holder: World Trade Organization Source of data: WTO, the World Bank, UN