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- External focus: the share of friendly countries in Russia's non-primary exports has reached 86%
External focus: the share of friendly countries in Russia's non-primary exports has reached 86%
According to the results of the first nine months of 2025, the share of friendly countries in non-primary non-energy exports of the Russian Federation amounted to 86%, the Ministry of Industry and Trade reported. Which industries have made the greatest contribution to achieving this indicator, and whether further growth can be expected in 2026, can be found in the Izvestia article.
The main drivers
The key drivers of the growth of supplies to friendly countries are metal products, in particular non-ferrous metals (copper, aluminum), flat rolled iron, rods, cast iron, the Ministry of Industry and Trade told Izvestia. Engineering products, namely fuel rods, special vehicles and computing machines, also play an important role.
"The key partners here are China, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Turkey and India. Compared to the first nine months of 2024, it is impossible not to note the high growth rate of non—primary non-energy goods in Iran by 21%, Algeria by 67% and in the UAE by two times," the ministry said.
Among the measures of state support, subsidizing the logistics costs of exporters is the most in demand. The key barriers are primarily logistical difficulties and issues of international settlements, as well as the need to certify their products in new markets, according to the agency.
Financial instruments have become the most effective, in particular subsidizing logistics, export lending and insurance through REC and EXIAR, as well as a mechanism for compensating part of the costs of certification and adaptation of products to the requirements of foreign markets, Sergey Katyrin, President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation, told Izvestia.
"Settlements in national currencies, agreements on mutual recognition of standards and the active work of trade missions played an important role," he said. — For non-primary exports, systematic support for SMEs entering foreign markets has become a critically important factor.
The main difficulties, he said, are related to logistics and calculations, including the cost of transportation and cross-border payments, as well as differences in technical requirements and certification. An additional limiting factor remains the lack of awareness of businesses about the specifics of individual markets and counterparties.
The strategy chosen by the state to create alternative trade, financial and logistics routes is yielding results, allowing Russia to maintain a prominent place in the global commodity exchange system, Nonna Kagramanyan, Deputy Chairman and head of the Executive Committee of Delovaya Rossiya, told Izvestia. Businesses are purposefully exploring areas that until recently were perceived as difficult or atypical. A significant contribution to the expansion of exports is provided by the supply of products from the agro-industrial sector, as well as access to foreign markets by Russian IT companies that have managed to adapt to new conditions and prove their competitiveness. Additional potential is created by the platform model of the economy, which gives domestic consumer brands access to the markets of friendly countries.
Speaking about government support for exporters, she said, it is difficult to reduce it to individual measures. The joint work of relevant departments and the Russian Export Center has built a comprehensive system that includes the entire set of necessary solutions — from educational programs and analytics to marketing support and financial instruments.
— As long as the global trading system forms its new contours, we will fix certain difficulties in the simplest things.: how to deliver the goods, how to get money for them, how to find a reliable partner, how to properly assess the market potential," the expert said. — I would like to emphasize once again that our country probably has the best support system for Russian companies, because it works closely with businesses and is ready for continuous improvement.
Changing conditions
Even under the conditions of sanctions pressure, the risks of secondary restrictions for partners and significant logistical problems, the transition to supplies from friendly countries proved successful, Sergei Grishunin, managing director of the NRA rating service, told Izvestia.
— If in 2021 friendly countries accounted for only about 60.5% of the NOE, by the end of 2024 this figure has already reached 84%. The total volume of such exports for the reporting period amounted to $111.4 billion, showing an increase of 6%. The largest contribution to this commodity mass is traditionally made by industrial goods, the export volume of which amounted to $85.4 billion, and agricultural products worth $26 billion," the expert said.
These areas, in his opinion, are currently dragging the process of foreign trade reorientation, but the limited availability of information hinders a full-fledged analysis. Detailed open statistics have not been disclosed for about six months. At the same time, government support is mainly limited to traditional measures to stimulate investment in the non-primary non-energy sector, including mechanisms like the SPIC, but this is clearly not enough.
The main gap is the weak support of exports from the financial side in the markets of friendly countries. We are talking about financing services, full-cycle contracts, and export credit instruments, according to Sergey Grishunin.
— So far, such solutions have been minimally developed, and in this aspect Russia is noticeably inferior to China. In our opinion, insufficient financial support from development institutions is the main bottleneck that reduces the competitiveness of non—primary goods and services," he said.
In addition, a number of system limitations remain, the expert added. Logistics exerts significant pressure. Due to the disruption of familiar routes and the transition to longer chains, transportation costs are estimated to have increased by about 20% in 2024. In some industries, such as the pulp and paper industry, shipments to China are losing economic meaning amid rising shipping costs and currency fluctuations.
In 2025, the volume of non—primary non-energy exports may reach about $160 billion, above the level of 2023, but below the peak values of 2021, Alexander Firanchuk, a leading researcher at the International Laboratory for Foreign Trade Research at the Presidential Academy, told Izvestia.
— The effectiveness of state support measures for exports is not uniform: the best results have been shown by tools related to the adaptation of products to the requirements of foreign markets, the development of cooperation, training and analytical support, especially in demand among small and medium-sized businesses. Expensive and poorly scalable measures proved to be less effective," believes Alexander Firanchuk.
The key barriers for exporters remain — these are difficulties with cross-border settlements, the rising cost of financial support for transactions, the caution of foreign counterparties due to the risk of secondary sanctions, as well as the strengthening of the ruble, which reduces the price competitiveness of industrial goods, he noted. To a lesser extent, these factors affect products with stable global demand, primarily agricultural goods, metals and chemicals.
Mechanical engineering, chemistry and metallurgy provided the main contribution to the growth of the indicator against the background of high demand for Russian machinery, equipment and transport in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Ekaterina Shveeva, associate professor of the Department of Management and GMU at the Faculty of Economics and Management at MGUT Razumovsky, told Izvestia. Support for industrial exports in 2025 was provided by transport subsidies, preferential loans, the development of payment routes with friendly countries, as well as financing research and development and the export of products to foreign markets. At the same time, serious constraints remain due to the lengthening and increasing cost of logistics, the shortage of containers and the difficulties of settlements due to restrictions on international payments.
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