saw a 30.9% decline in exports in 2015, mainly because of a sharp decline in production output in Donetsk Oblast and in Luhansk Oblast (the two regions of Donbas). These two regions were responsible for 40.6% of the total export-decline rate. Before the war they had been two of the more industrial oblasts of Ukraine. According to the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, Ukraine had a surplus in its balance of payments in January–November 2015 of $566 million and has had a trade deficit of $11.046 billion during the same period in 2014. On 31 December 2015, Ukraine's public debt stood at 79% of its GDP. It had shrank $4.324 billion in 2015 to end up at $65.488 billion. But calculated in hryvnia, the debt had grown by 42.78%. In 2015, the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine rated 20–25% of Ukrainian households as poor. $2.526 billion entered the Ukrainian economy via remittances in 2015, 34.9% less than in 2014. $431 million was sent from Ukraine to elsewhere using remittances. In January 2016, Bloomberg rated Ukraine's economy as the 41st most innovative in the world, down from 33rd in January 2015. In May 2016, the IMF mission chief for Ukraine, Ron van Rood, stated that the reduction of corruption was a key test for continued international support. In 2015 Transparency International ranked Ukraine 130th out of 168 countries in its Corruption Perceptions Index. In February 2016, historian Andrew Wilson assessed progress in reducing corruption as poor as of 2016. Aivaras Abromavičius, Ukraine's then-Minister of Economy and Trade, resigned in February 2016, citing ingrained corruption. In October, at a conference for foreign investors, corruption and lack of trust in the judiciary were identified as the largest obstacles to investment. Late in July 2016, the State Statistics Service of Ukraine reported that, compared with June 2015, real wages had increased by 17.3%. Simultaneously the National Bank of Ukraine reported a $406 million surplus in Ukraine's January–June 2016 balance of payments against a deficit of $1.3 billion in the same period in 2015. According to Ukraine's State Statistics Service, inflation in 2016 came down to 13.9%; while it had stood at 43.3% in 2015 and at 24.9% in 2014. The Economist has compared the severity of Ukraine's recession to that of the Greek recession in 2011–2012 – pointing to Ukraine experiencing an 8–9% decline in GDP from 2014 to 2015 and Greece