MORE FROM THE IMF…

The International Monetary Fund in its latest World Economic Outlook estimates Russia’s gross domestic product for 1999 at US$174.8 billion, around $1,200 per capita. The Fund complains that Russia’s Central Bank continues to lend to insolvent commercial banks and that the government has failed to address fundamental fiscal problems. Although the devaluation has helped stimulate domestic industry by pricing imports out of the market, the Fund worries that production and transit constraints have kept energy exports from rising. That means Russia’s “recovery” (as the Fund sees it) is “fragile”…. First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko said the government expects to receive in October another $640 million of the $4.5 billion credit the Fund’s Board of Directors authorized in July.