OREANDA-NEWS. Despite the pandemic and the domestic political situation in Russia, German business is once again expanding it's investments in this country. From January to March of this year, German companies invested 1.1 billion euros in the Russian economy, the German-Russian Chamber of Foreign Trade (AHK) reported on Monday, May 31, citing data from the Federal Bank of Germany (Bundesbank).

This is almost a quarter lower than in the first quarter of 2020. Last year, the outflow of investment was so strong that at the end of the whole year, the investment indicator of German business in Russia was negative: 370 million investments were withdrawn from the country. At the same time, in 2018, direct investment by German firms in Russia reached a record value of 3.4 billion euros. In 2019, this figure was about 2 billion euros.

«The positive trend of German investment in Russia, which existed before the outbreak of the pandemic, continues», said Matthias Schepp, Chairman of the AHK Management Board. He recalled the «investment boom of the past years» in Russia, which was marked by major projects, in particular, the construction of the Nord Stream–2 pipeline, the supply of Linde gas cleaning plants, modern Siemens trains, as well as large-scale investments of the automaker Volkswagen in Russian factories.

In turn, the head of the AHK, Rainer Seele, called the mutual sanctions of the EU and Russia one of the main problems in German-Russian economic relations. Referring to the AHK survey of thousands of German companies operating in Russia, he stressed that business in Germany «hopes for the end of the sanctions spiral».

«Therefore, we call on politicians in Moscow, Washington, Berlin, Brussels and Paris to make even greater efforts to engage in serious dialogue in order to resolve the disputed issues», Seele said.