Russian officials are upbeat about key economic indicators in the final weeks of the year, with finance and economics chiefs putting a brighter spin on results after the gloomy prognoses of the spring.

Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on December 10 his ministry expects Russia's capital outflow will not exceed $60bn at end-2015. Siluanov noted that the current projection is almost half the initially projected outflow figure of more than $110bn, cut to $70bn in November, and praised the much improved outlook as a "measure of our activities in the budget policy sphere".

The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) also said provisional net capital outflow for January-November stood at $53bn, almost halving from last year's total.

On December 9, Minister of Economic Development Alexei Ulyukayev also improved the full-year GDP contraction forecast from the previous 3.9% to 3.7% recession.

GDP already contracted by 3.7% in January-September, according to the latest dynamics report published on December 10. In Q3 alone, GDP decline was confirmed at the previously estimated 4.1% y/y, which outperformed the government's forecast and was met positively by experts.

As the Russian economy finally bottoms out, Ulyukayev declared at a meeting with EU diplomats in late November that "the recession in Russian economy is officially over".

Crucially too, the run rate of inflation has fallen back to the long-term average of 0.7%, from a point in late 2014 when it was was growing by over 3 percentage points per month.