A spate of recent articles have noted a 45% drop in foreign direct investment in Russia for the first six months of this year. Although the global economy has been challenging for all economies, China’s own FDI fell 35.7% through July of this year.
Cyprus leads with investment in Russia, but it is a well-known tax-advantaged locale for Russian businessmen. The other leading countries are Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany.
Chris Weafer, a frequent Russian economics commentator and chief strategist at Uralsib, discounted a large portion of the cited FDI figure by saying “actual non-Russian sourced FDI is currently negligible.”
