The Russian Industry in 2015-2016: Was There Any Crisis?

The monitoring of a representative set of indicators of business surveys carried out by the Gaidar Institute permits to identify the specifics of the 2015–2016 crisis in Russian industry. Firstly, within the two crisis years the dynamics of the main indicators (demand, output and prices) were rather weak which situation was quite an unexpected one for observers and different from the previous crises. Secondly, one could get psychologically prepared to the 2015 crisis several years in advance when the thesis of “the second wave of the crisis” was introduced. The above factors formed the third specifics of 2015 – Russian enterprises went through that crisis rather smoothly. Fourthly, the only manifestations of the 2015–2016 crisis for Russian industry were a dramatic surge in the interest rate on bank loans and a collapse of investment plans.