The Belarusian market turned out to be more attractive for Russian business than the Bahamas

Belarus accumulated almost 70% of the direct investments of Russian residents attracted to the countries of the former USSR (with the exception of the Baltic States) and ranked first in terms of their volume.

Of the total amount of $499 million that was invested by Russian companies in the region in the first quarter of this year, Belarusian recipients accounted for $346 million, the Central Bank of RUSSIA reports: $314 million are reinvestment of income, $22 million are loans, and $10 million are investments in capital.

In the first quarter, Belarus overtook Ukraine, which, despite political contradictions, was the main recipient of Russian investment resources in the post-Soviet space in 2016 ($822 million versus $629 million for Belarus). In January-March of this year, according to the Central Bank, there was an outflow of Russian capital in the Ukrainian direction, which amounted to “minus” $40 million.

In comparison with the first quarter of last year, the volume of Russian resources attracted to Belarus in January-March 2017 has become almost two less. At the beginning of 2016, the Russians invested $643 million in the Belarusian economy.

In total, according to the Central Bank of Russia, direct investments of Russian residents abroad increased to 8212 million dollars. For comparison: for the same period in 2016, their volume was 7823 million dollars.

On a global scale, in terms of investment attractiveness for Russian capital, Belarus ranked fifth, behind Singapore ($3,804 million), Cyprus ($2,575 million), Luxembourg ($1,671 million) and the British Virgin Islands ($1,214 million). The Belarusian market turned out to be more attractive for Russian business than the Bahamas, where $326 million was invested.

The Central Bank also provides data on the outflow of investments. The largest reverse flows were recorded from the Cayman Islands (minus $1,060 million), the Netherlands (minus $1,043 million) and Hong Kong ($543 million).