OREANDA-NEWS. July 07, 2009. According to Russian 1H09 balance-of-payments data, the country's current account remained at US17.2 bln, which is down from US64.3 bln a year ago, reported the press-centre of OTKRITIE Financial Corporation.

The trade balance is at US 43.2 bln.

View: The positive current account primarily reflects a 39.4% drop in imports (US 27.4 bln). While this helps support Russian BoP this clearly reflects the economic drop, which stood at 10.2% in 5M09.

On the exports front the drop was 47%, due to the decline n commodity prices. However, oil and gas still account for 61.3% of Russian exports, this which confirms the weakness of Russia's export structure, as weel as its vulnerability to volatile commodity prices.