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A few days prior to the May holidays, The State Duma received a draft federal law on the differentiation of the unified agricultural tax (UAT) rate in the rage of 0-6%.

Eurasian economic commission announced beginning of negotiations with the PRC on trade and economic cooperation agreement

The publication on 22 April on Russia's government official website of "The Main Results of the Performance of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation in 2014" provides more details on the main performance results of the military industrial complex(MIC) which Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced the day before at the State Duma.

The Bank of Russia has made a decision, effective since 21 April 2015, to increase minimum interest rates at FX repo auctions by 0.5 p.p. to the LIBOR plus 2 p.p. for a term of one week and 28 days and 2.5 p.p. for a term of 12 months.

Regulator's unbiased and delicate understanding of what is really going on in the market is difficult to overestimate in times of crisis.

The economic situation in January–March 2015 was governed by simultaneous contraction in investment and consumer demand.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released on 13 April its annual SIPRI Yearbook of world military expenditure in 2014.

The need to undertake measures of state support in order to stimulate mortgage-backed lending has recently been discussed with increasing frequency.

The drastic change in the macroeconomic situation in the past year, especially at the end of it (the massive capital outflow, the introduction of various mutual sanctions, the fall of global prices of energy resources, the weakening of the ruble's exchange rate, the chance of a recession in the Russian economy) has necessitated the effective federal budget to be updated for another three years to come (2015–2017).

The monetary policy is varying in configuration.

The past year was marked by launching the Forecast plan (program) of federal property privatization and the guidelines of federal property privatization for 2014-2016 approved by the Russian Government Executive Order of 1 July 2013 No. 1111-р.

Russia's industry entered 2015, facing totally new conditions. A double digit inflation, the sweeping devaluation of the national currency and the drastic increase in the central bank key interest rate can be distinguished among the "crisis-driven surprises" late in 2014. It is worthwhile noting that the Russian authorities were also responsible for all those "innovations".

At the recent meeting in Astana between the leaders of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, Vladimir Putin said that time had come for the three countries to think over a currency union. The Russian President in March commissioned the Bank of Russia and the Russian government to explore the viability and feasibility of establishing a currency union within the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).

The Bank of Russia has published the performance figures of credit institutions as of the beginning of March 2015, showing that risks have been ballooning in the banking system.

In January–February 2015, Industrial Production Index dropped to 99.6% compared to its value for January–February 2014; the corresponding index for February 2015 is 99.6% vs. 98.4%. in February 2014.

At the Bank of Russia Board of Directors' meeting on 13 March, it was decided that the key interest rate should be reduced by 1 pp. – from 15% to 14%.