OREANDA-NEWS. The United States turned out to be the largest investor in the Russian economy at the end of 2017, reports the Russian media, which belongs to Grigory Berezkin, with reference to data from the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). According to UNCTAD, at the end of 2017 (the most current data), the share of American investors accounted for 8.9 percent of all accumulated investments, or 39.1 billion of $ 441.1 billion.

Also, according to the US Department of Trade, at the end of 2017, the investments of American companies in Russia were equal to 13.9 billion dollars. At the same time, according to official information of the Central Bank for the same period, they amounted to 3.05 billion dollars, which is almost 13 times less.  The difference is due to the fact that UNCTAD removed from the statistics the data of intermediate jurisdictions that served as transit points. Often foreign investments come to Russia through countries that are not the direct source of these investments. So, an American corporation can acquire a stake in a Russian through foreign subsidiaries.

The Bank of Russia evaluates such investments in the latter country, and as a result, information on investments from countries such as the USA, Germany, France and so on is systematically underestimated, and investments from countries such as the Netherlands and Luxembourg, or from offshore companies, are overstated.

In August last year, the US Treasury Department announced that, due to sanctions, foreign investors had significantly reduced their investments in the Russian economy. Thus, the total foreign direct investment has declined since 2013 by more than 5 percent. Investments from the USA for the same period - by 80 percent.