Russia’s economy shrank the most on record in 2009 after the price of oil slumped 77 percent from peak to trough and left businesses to start the year trying to adjust to smaller profits as banks cut off credit. Gross domestic product fell 7.9 percent in 2009 after rising 5.6 percent the previous year, the State Statistics Service said on its Web site today, citing preliminary figures. The median forecast of 18 economists in a Bloomberg survey was for an 8.5 percent contraction, in line with the government’s prediction. President Dmitry Medvedev has called 2009 the “hardest year” since Russia’s 1998 default. Banks withheld credit and companies were forced to restructure debts as 12 consecutive months of contracting industrial output depleted earnings. The sudden drop in Urals crude, the country’s chief export, to $32 in December 2008 from a peak of $143 in July that year ended a decade of growth in the world’s biggest energy exporter. “Among the largest economies, growth collapsed the most” in Russia, Tatiana Orlova, an economist at ING Bank NV in Moscow, said before the report. “The economy was impacted by its high oil dependence and was vulnerable when external capital markets shut down.” ----------Oil rebound At the same time, oil’s 83 percent rebound last year helped to buoy the economy toward recovery, resulting in a smaller contraction than the government forecast. “The most important factor was obviously the reversal of the trend in global markets and the rise in commodities prices,” said UralSib economist Vladimir Tikhomirov. “This was very important for the bounce-back in the fourth quarter.” Household spending shrank 8.1 percent last year, the office said. Net exports, or exports minus imports, grew 58 percent in 2009 while fixed capital investment fell 18.2 percent, according to the report. Russia has yet to publish official fourth quarter GDP figures. The ruble was 0.2 percent weaker against the dollar at 30.3315 as of 12:36 p.m. in Moscow, after falling as much as 0.5 percent earlier. The benchmark Micex Index was down 0.6 percent at 1,410.75. GDP slumped a record 10.9 percent in the second quarter, underscoring what Medvedev in his “Go Russia” open letter called a “humiliating” reliance on commodities. Even as the contraction slowed to 8.9 percent in the third quarter, Russia’s performance lagged its emerging market peers. Brazil’s GDP fell 1.2 percent that quarter, while China’s grew 10.7 percent in the fourth and India’s increased 7.9 percent in the third.