MOSCOW, Aug 20: Five years after Russia’s economic collapse, the country’s impressive recovery figures still rely too heavily on fickle international oil prices, the World Bank warned on Wednesday.

Russia’s economic performance once again exceeded even the most optimistic expectations in the first half of 2003, the World Bank said in a quarterly report released in Moscow.

But though looking back in time, the economy is in better shape than at any other time since the beginning of reform... growth remains vulnerable.

Neither domestic consumption nor domestic investment are yet strong enough to guarantee a self-sustained recovery, the report said.

The Russian economy has bounced back with a vengeance following the August 1998 financial implosion that saw many people’s life saving’s wiped out and foreign investors bitterly counting their losses following a debt default and ruble devaluation.

But the World Bank stressed that much of the recent recovery has been due to a rising price of Russia’s main export oil — with energy prices soaring due to continuing instability in the Middle East — and not to structural changes to the economy.—AFP