Russia beats out China in top 3 emerging economies list

Despite years of EU and US sanctions, Russia has secured second place in the Bloomberg rating of emerging economies, behind Malaysia and just ahead of China.

The business news agency ranked 20 developing nations in its scorecard that includes metrics ranging from growth prospects to the state of the current account, sovereign credit ratings and stock and bond valuations. Russia gained 2.36 points on these criteria, while the only country topping it is Malaysia with 2.55. The Asian country has held on to the top spot on the list since the last ratings were published in June thanks to its current-account surplus, relatively stable economic growth outlook and valuations, according to Bloomberg.

Despite having climbed one place up since June, China lags behind Russia by nearly one point. The Philippines and Colombia round out the top five, while Turkey plunged to the bottom of the list, falling from fifth to the twentieth position.

The Russian economy's stronger position was earlier noted in the annual World Banks’ Doing Business survey, which ranks 190 national economies based on 11 areas of business regulation. This year Russia rose to 31st place, four spots above last year’s results. Russia’s Minister for Economic Development Maxim Oreshkin said he was pleased with the news despite missing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s target.

“If we analyze the situation as a whole, we achieved our target. 31st place isn’t that far from 20th, especially if you take into account that we started from 124th,” the minister told business daily Vedomosti. He added that the country will be working to reach the top 20 in six years.

Since 2014, Moscow has faced several rounds of Western sanctions, both from the EU and the US. Russia has been accused of involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine and annexing Crimea, despite the region's referendum to reunify with Russia. More recently, Washington accused Russia of meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections. While presenting no concrete evidence, the US has imposed several rounds of sanctions, including against major Russian companies and senior government officials.

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