June 9, 2014. The amount of direct investment in Russia, a considerable rise in which was observable last year, is going to nearly halve in 2014; this is the forecast quoted in a report by Wiener Institut fuer Internationale Wirtschaftsvergleiche (WIIW) that was published on Thursday, Banki.ru says.

According to the database the institute has been keeping on the basis of data supplied by a number of national statistical services, the amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Russia reached €59.667bn in 2013, which was 51.6% more than in the previous year. However, due to the fact that the capital outflow figures were significantly greater, the net FDI actually stood at - €11,777bn. According to the Austrian economists' forecasts, the FDI in Russia might only reach as little as €30bn this year.

'The amount of FDI in Russia was much larger in 2013 than a year earlier, yet the capital outflow increased on a noticeably larger rate, which resulted in the negative figure for the net FDI,' these economists say. Investment into projects starting from scratch was only limited and tended to go down even before the Ukraine issue came into play. The FDI dropped in the first quarter of 2014.