Russian Stock Market Still Suffering From 1998 Crisis

The volume of capitalization of the Russian stock market, which underwent a crisis twice in the past four years, still has not recovered to the level of 1997. The capitalization volume amounted to more than $100 billion in 1997 and in October 2001 it was only about $66 billion. This information was reported in a resolution passed at today's round-table meeting devoted to problems of the Russian stock market. The meeting was held under the aegis of the Expert Institute of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. The resolution says that the capitalization of the whole Russian stock market is less than that of any of the largest companies in Europe or the USA. The number of liquid Russian securities reduced from 56 in 1997 to 19 in 2001. Russia is in 33d place out of 56 countries in the total trade volume of securities on all exchanges. Thus, Russia is behind not only industrialized countries but also behind emerging markets. In addition, the executive director of the Expert Institute noted that only 0.4 per cent of the total volume of investments were attracted to Russia via the stock market in 2000. In other words, the Russian stock market is speculative in character and it does not play a role as an instrument for attracting capital to the Russian economy.