“Russia faced a double blow due to a sharp drop in oil prices and a slowdown in domestic demand caused by quarantine in the context of the outbreak of COVID-19,” the EC report says.
It notes that against this background, "in the first half of 2020, a sharp decline in economic activity is expected."
The EC expects Russia’s oil revenues to be halved if “the current price trend continues.”
The forecast for GDP growth for 2021 by the EC increased by 0.1 percentage points - up to 1.6%.
In addition, the EC worsened the forecast for China's GDP growth for 2020 to 1% due to the pandemic, improved for 2021 to 7.8%.
The forecast for GDP is worsened, including for Germany (a fall of 6.5% from an increase of 1% earlier), the United States (before a fall of 6.5% from an increase of 1.8%).
Earlier, the head of the Accounts Chamber, Alexei Kudrin, said that Russia's GDP would fall by about 5% in 2020, if quarantine measures were to continue.
In early April, Russian leader Vladimir Putin described the effects of the spread of the virus on the economy and the decline in oil prices as a double blow.