"The corruption situation is so dramatic that the report authors singled out corruption-related losses of Russian economy. They estimated these losses at about 50% expenses of Russian businesspeople. Some 80% of current assets in the education system are shadowy, that is to say mainly related to the corruption, and this figure reaches 90% in state and municipal services."
One component of GDP is "personal consumption". In Russia, if a large number of people are consuming black market goods, then the "actual" GDP is going to be much higher than the government-reported GDP.
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[ 0.18 ms ] story [ 28.6 ms ] thread"The corruption situation is so dramatic that the report authors singled out corruption-related losses of Russian economy. They estimated these losses at about 50% expenses of Russian businesspeople. Some 80% of current assets in the education system are shadowy, that is to say mainly related to the corruption, and this figure reaches 90% in state and municipal services."
I'm guessing they meant 50% of GDP is in black markets, or that 50% of business expenses go to bribing people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_economy#Comparison_...
(The figures are a bit dated, but still interesting.)