Russia's central bank forecasts 2014 growth below 1.0%

Russia's Central Bank chief warned on Wednesday that economic growth was likely to slow to less than one percent in 2014, lowering its previous forecast. "Currently we believe that realising our prognosis on growth in 2014 that we presented last year is hardly probable," Central Bank chief Elvira Nabiullina said, Russian agencies reported. "We thought that growth would be between 1.5 percent and 1.8 percent, but now it is more likely that growth will slow to less than 1 percent," she said. Nabiullina had still predicted growth of between 1.5 percent to 1.8 in mid-February this year shortly before Russia sent troops into Crimea. Russian economy, already staggering due to a weakened ruble and falling foreign investment, has been damaged further by Moscow's annexation of the peninsula, which resulted in targeted Western sanctions and stock market's slump by 6.0 percent in March. Economy minister Alexei Ulyukayev said late last month that Russia could see growth of just 0.6 percent this year with capital flight reaching $100 billion. Former finance minister Alexei Kudrin this month offered an even more dire prognosis of growth "around zero", calling it the price of an "independent foreign policy." The World Bank last Wednesday said that a long-drawn-out crisis in Ukraine could lead to Russia's economy contracting by up to 1.8 percent in 2014.