Central Bank: Russian Economy's Dependence on Oil Prices Discreasing

According to the head of Russia's Central Bank, oil exports as a share of Russia’s total goods exports have went down to 48 percent in December last year with the country's economy slowly shedding it's dependence on oil prices.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The dependence of the Russian economy and the national currency's exchange rate on oil prices is gradually decreasing, however, there is a need to further diversify the country’s economy to continue this trend, the Russian Central Bank head said Friday.

"Oil exports as a share of Russia’s total goods exports have decreased from 67 percent in late 2013 to 48 percent in December last year. And the dependence of the economy and the ruble’s [exchange] rate on oil is going down. But of course, we need structural efforts to diversify the economy so that this dependence on oil prices further declines," Elvira Nabiullina stated at a Finance Ministry meeting.

The Russian ruble hit its lowest level since December 2014, trading at 80.16 rubles to the dollar, in the wake of falling oil prices, according to January 20 foreign exchange market data.

The ruble has lost about half of its value against the dollar since 2014 amid low global oil prices and Western economic sanctions, imposed against Russia over the situation in Ukraine.