MOSCOW, Nov 1: The investment climate in Russia has improved this year but competitiveness of Russian enterprises has been hurt by a strengthening ruble, the World Bank said in a report released on Tuesday.

After the difficult years of 2003 and 2004, marked by investigations into the Yukos oil giant that raised questions about the status of past privatizations of state assets, “attitudes of foreign and domestic investors have unquestionably improved,” the report on the Russian economy said.

Foreign direct investment rose by 30 percent in the first half of this year over the same period last year to $4.5 billion (3.7 billion euros), although the bulk of this investment was in the petroleum sector, the World Bank said.

The World Bank said there had been a “striking” decrease in outflow of private capital from Russia from 17.4 billion dollars in the first nine months of 2004 to just 2.8 billion dollars for the same period this year.—AFP