The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has retained its forecast for Ukraine's economic growth in 2018 at 3.2% year-on-year, and reviewed downwards the 2019 forecast to 3.3% y/y from 4% y/y, the multinational lender said in its World Economic Outlook
Russia's industrial output in March expanded by 1% year-on-year, slowing down from 1.5% y/y seen in February and 2.9% y/y in January, according to the report by Rosstat statistics service.
Increased transit container traffic through the Eurasian Economic Union will depend on trade between China and the EU, but transit states will need to expand their transport infrastructure and remove a number of barriers, EDB report says.
Ukraine's foreign exchange reserves declined by 1.2% month-on-month to $18.191bn in March, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) reports
Consumer prices in Russia rose by 0.3% month-on-month in Russia in March 2018, in line with previously observed weekly inflation dynamics and bringing the annual inflation rate to 2.4% versus 2.2% seen in February.
The Watcom index, which measures footfall in the leading shopping malls, has been falling steadily since its inception in 2014 as Russians increasingly move online to buy everything from sugar to shoes.
Bond issues from emerging markets were strong in the first quarter of this year with bond traders ignoring the political brouhaha.
Russia’s manufacturing PMI put in a marginal rise in March up to 50.6 from 50.2 a month earlier and only just above the 50 no-change mark in the IHS Markit index, a composite snapshot of manufacturing actively based on a monthly survey.
Inflation dropped to a record low of 2.2% y/y at the beginning of the year, well short of the official year-end target of 4%.