Net private capital outflows from Russia in the first half of 2017 reached up to 14.7 billion U.S. dollars, a 70 percent increase compared to 8.6 billion dollars in the same period last year, the Russian central bank's statistics showed Tuesday.

The bank said the main cause of the increase is the banking sector's transactions related to fund inflows to resident client accounts at the beginning of this year and active foreign debt repayments by banks.

In view of a recovering economy, other sectors have become net importers of foreign capital, it added.

Preliminary estimates also showed that Russia's surplus in the current account of the balance of payments in the same period amounted to 23.0 billion dollars, up from 14.9 billion dollars a year earlier, which was mostly driven by more favorable world prices for key Russian export commodities, the bank said.