The situation in the Russian economy is now better than it was expected at the end of last year. This was told by the Minister of Economic Development Aleksei Ulyukayev to the President Vladimir Putin, as TASS reported. According to Ulyukayev, the partial indicators improvement is due to the result of adoption of anti-crisis measures, as well as the stabilization of inflation and rouble exchange rate.

      The minister cited the example of air transportation where the fall made up 10 percent instead of 20 percent expected by analysts. In this case the fall was due to the collapse in external flights (minus 18 percent), and the growth made up 10 percent on domestic routes. The decline in the machine-building industry turned out to be less significant by five percentage points, as compared with the forecast (33 percent, as compared with the same period of last year versus 38 percent).