The russian government is imposing restrictions on the publication of data about its economic indicators in order to hide from the world the impact of the sanctions imposed on it. This was reported by Liga with reference to the WSJ.
In particular, russia is reducing the amount of published information on public debt, banks, trade statistics and oil production.
The central bank has limited the amount of financial information that local banks are required to publish regularly, and lawmakers are working on a bill banning creditors from sharing data with foreign countries.
The WSJ also writes that the growing restrictions of publicly available data is part of the russian government's efforts to protect the economy and businesses from further Western sanctions against Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. The limited data means that Washington and Brussels will be less aware of whether and how sanctions are harming the russian economy. This can make it difficult to find new targets and fine-tune future rounds of sanctions.
At the same time, the Russian government continues to publish key numbers such as inflation, gross domestic product, and many other data.
According to the WSJ, analysts may be able to reconstruct the impact of sanctions on Russia by studying the data of its major trading partners, but this is a time-consuming process and may take time to bild a full picture.
The US and European Union officials are discussing options for reducing the income that russia receives from oil sales.