Russia's Economy Has Shrunk So Much It's Now Only As Small As Spain
REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi
The decline in the price of oil, Western economic sanctions against the nation following its invasion of Ukraine, and the collapse of the Russian rouble that resulted, has decimated Russia's economy.
Now Russian GDP has shrunk so much it is no longer the world's eighth largest economic power, according to The Telegraph. Instead, Putin's Russia is now carries roughly the same economic weight as ... Spain:
Russia has lost its ranking as the world’s eighth biggest economy, shrinking in just nine months from a $2.1 trillion petro-giant to a mid-size player comparable with Korea or Spain.
For the past several years, Spain has been regarded as one of Europe's more feeble economies, with 1 in 4 Spaniards unemployed. Spain's GDP was about $1.4 trillion in 2013, according to the World Bank. Spain was the 13th biggest economy on the planet until Putin ordered tanks into the Crimea.
Now it is likely that Italy, India, Canada, and Australia are all more economically significant than Russia. Here was the World Bank's GDP ranking for 2013, before Russia went into its current crisis. The numbers are in billions of US dollars:
(European Union 17,350,853)
1 United States 16,800,000
2 China 9,240,270
3 Japan 4,901,530
4 Germany 3,634,823
5 France 2,734,949
6 UK 2,521,381
7 Brazil 2,245,673
8 Russia 2,096,777
9 Italy 2,071,307
10 India 1,876,797
11 Canada 1,826,769
12 Australia 1,560,597
13 Spain 1,358,263
14 S Korea 1,304,554
15 Mexico 1,260,915
It's not clear what Russia's GDP equivalent is right now because the decline of the rouble has been so swift and volatile that the calculation needs to be done anew every day. On Monday the rouble experienced its largest one-day flop since the 1998 Russian crisis.
Of course, this may all be temporary. The price of oil has sunk to just above $68 a barrel (for WTI), dragging the oil-dependent Russian economy with it. If the price perks up, Russia can expect to make its way back up the GDP charts.
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