This study focuses on the process of liberalization of Russia's foreign trade and investigates the changes in the geographic and commodity struvtures of foreign trade that has happened in the process of liberalization policy in 1990s.
Since January 1...
This study focuses on the process of liberalization of Russia's foreign trade and investigates the changes in the geographic and commodity struvtures of foreign trade that has happened in the process of liberalization policy in 1990s.
Since January 1992, when a substantial liberalization of foreign trede went into effect, there has been a range of positive trends indicating signs of overcoming the post-communist crisis in the foreign trade sphere. First of all, Russia's foreign trade turnover has increased rapidly and the surplus in the balance of trade continued for the recent years.
The geographic distribution of trade has also changed substantially. The collapse of the trade arrangements of the CMEA contributed to the dissolution of traditional trade links. The OECD countries are now the largest trade partners of Russia. Accordingly, while integrating in the world economy, Russia has developed foreign trade relations with market-oriented countries
However, despite these positive results of foreign trade liberalization, it can be argued that foreign trade liberalization combined with 'shock therapy' brought about the 'deindustrialization' of the Russian economy. The hasty and thoughtless foreign trade liberalization policy has formed a certain pattern of trade which was observed in developing countries. Russia has mainly exported a narrow range of products, particularly raw materials and natural resources(natural gas, crude oil, and petroleum products, etc)and imported manufactured goods, food and agricultural raw materials.
In conculsion, at present deformed foreign trade structure is deepening the dependency of the Russian economy upon the external world. This trend is one of the main factors threatening economic security of Russ