The R is “BRICs” is Russia.

Moving forward from the collapse of political and economic dictatorship in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s and the progressive policies formed from ‘Glasnost‘ meaning openness and ‘Perestroika‘ meaning restructuring, the Russian economy has radically evolved.

The Russian stock market has a huge concentration of oil and gas stocks (names like Rosneft and Gazprom are pretty familiar). Exports from oil and gas make up just over 20% of Russian GDP. Also other companies are raising their profile, such as VTB Capital, Kaspersky Labs, Alfa Bank, Lukoil, Mobile Telesystems, RosTelecom, TNK-BP, Svyazinvest and VimpelCom.

What is interesting is to look at domestic mortgage debt in Russia. Today the mortgage debt in only 3% of total GDP, in the UK mortgage debt is 84% of total GDP, in the USA mortgage debt is 76% of total GDP.
What is also incredible, is that today the Russian government, actually has a budget surplus, it spends less that it earns.

Also the domestic banking sector offers depositors an average interest rate of about 6% on savings. What is also noticeable is the growing middle class, and reading articles from The Boston Consulting Group, by 2016, Russia will overtake Germany as the largest market for cars in Europe, and by 2020, will command sales of over 4.4million new cars. Russia is becoming a more developed and stable economy.