Residential housing stands beside the Pregolya river in the Fisherman’s Village district of Kaliningrad, Russia. The outlook on Russia’s junk credit rating was raised by S&P Global Ratings with the end in sight for the nation’s longest recession in two decades. S&P lifted the outlook to stable from negative, maintaining its foreign-currency rating of BB+, one step short of investment grade and on par with Bulgaria and Indonesia, Bloomberg reported. Moody’s Investors Service also has Russia at that level, while Fitch Ratings has the country at its lowest
investment rating. Having been slammed by plunging oil prices, the world’s largest energy exporter is eyeing the end of an economic contraction that began at the start of 2015. While gross domestic product will probably shrink 0.2% this year, it will advance 0.8% in 2017, the Economy Ministry predicts. Even so, the government is running its widest budget deficit since 2010 and recession-induced spending is draining billions of dollars of fiscal buffers.