Karelia hardest hit by economic crisis
The Republic of Karelia is one of the Russian regions hardest hit by the world economic crisis.
According to the Federal State Statistics Service, 67 of 83 Russian regions experienced a fall in industrial production in the first quarter of 2009. In 11 of the regions, including Karelia, the fall is accompanied by high unemployment, newspaper Vedomosti reports.
Regional leader of the Republic of Karelia Sergey Katanandov in March acknowledged that the republic’s economy is experiencing a “serious drop”, and said that budgets would have to be revised and Civil servants will have their salaries cut by 10 percent or more this year, BarentsObserver reported.
Karelia is not the only region in the Russian part of the Barents Region to experience hardships. As the Norwegian Barents Secretariat’s new project Barents Monitoring shows, after years of growth and positive social-economic development, the Russian federal subjects in the Barents Region in 2008 faced the perspectives of a serious economic downturn.
