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Recent economic indicators Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Gross domestic product is a strong economic indicator of a country as it indicates the worth of all services and goods produced by a nation in a given year. As shown in annexure one, the Russian GDP suffered badly in the year 1998 and reduced by 4.6 % than the previous year. This setback was caused due to the major global crisis that caused havoc in the Russian markets resulting in a sharp decline in earnings from oil exports and a huge departure of foreign investors. Since then Russia’s GDP has rebounded with increases of 5.4% in 1999, 9% in 2000, 5% in 2001 and 4.1 % in 2002. One of the most important factors that aided in the improvement of the Russian GDP is the high price for crude oil and trade surplus. The crude oil price set by OPEC has consistently been around U.S $25 per gallon since 1999 and Russia being one of the largest producers of oil has benefited immensely form it. Fortunately, the war in Iraq didn’t have any impact on the world oil prices however the likelihood of lower oil prices could have a detrimental effect on Russia’s GDP. Besides Oil, the other factors that have aided to the rise in GDP have been industry, agriculture, construction an