The IMF has said Russia 'urgently' needs a plan to deal with bad loans and has cut its forecast for growth from 6.5% to 6%.  Russian banks may need around $41 billion for recapitalization in 2009.  Renaissance Group CEO Stephen Jennings is positive on the recession: 'I think in a year's time for Russia it's going to be like this crisis never happened'.  Russian stocks have surged as UBS predicts a 30% rally for shares.  The Times scrutinizes the powers that lie behind Sberbank and GAZ.  GAZ could begin production of Opel cars in as little as nine months.  Changes are underway at Rosneft, which imply that current President Sergei Bogdanchikov may be on the way out.  China has begun a probe into imports from Novolipetsk Steel, suggesting that the company may be practicing ...

by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /According to Deputy Economic Development Minister Andrei Klepach last week, Russia's economy shrank by 7 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2009, a staggering turnaround for an economy which has just enjoyed eight years of solid oil-fueled growth.br /br /"These figures are worse than we expected," Klepach said at a press conference in Kiev,citing preliminary figures. Klepach also stated that net capital outflows reached $33 billion in the first quarter of 2009, following record outflows of $130 billion in the second half of last year.br /br /pa href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SdsTJmo57XI/AAAAAAAANbI/gYR1beR2NiI/s1600-h/russia+gdp.png"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5321868440380239218" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 229px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SdsTJmo57XI/AAAAAAAANbI/gYR1beR2NiI/s400/russia+gdp.png" border="0" //abr /br /The Russian State Statistics Service have also released official gross domestic product figures for the fourth quarter of 2008. GDP was up 1.2 percent year on year, the worst reading for any quarter since ...