Page 43 - bne IntelliNews Country Report: Russia Dec17

Real wages, which are adjusted for inflation, rose 4.2% in October, above 2.8% growth predicted by analysts.
Wage arrears in Russia grew 3.5% or RUB118mn in October to RUB3.505bn , the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) said. Around RUB16mn of the October arrears were public sector wage arrears caused by delays with transferring budgeted funds, up RUB9mn or 34.5% since the end of September, including RUB4mn for the federal budget, up RUB2mn or 33.5%, RUB11mn for regional budgets, down RUB5mn or 33.2% and RUB1.3mn for local budgets, down 45.6% or RUB1.1mn . Companies and organizations themselves were responsible for RUB3.489bn or 99.5% of the arrears, up RUB127mn or 3.8% since the end of September.
4.5.3 Retail sector dynamics
4.5.4 bne Despair index
Retail sales grew less than expected as real disposable incomes of Russian households declined for the fourth month in a row , shrinking 1.3% in October compared with a year ago.
The Russian economy is on track to grow by more than 2% after two years of recession, officials reckon. Recent data, however, raises questions about the durability of the economic recovery.
bne’s despair index has a theoretical residual level of 6 . It is calculated as the sum of inflation (ideally 2%), unemployment ( 4%) and poverty (0%). The best result since 2013 was when the index fell to 23.16 and on a par or lower than most of the EU countries.
Russia’s despair index reached a peak of 33.7 in September 2015 and was elevated at about the same level for all of 2015. Russia’s despair index hit a
43 RUSSIA Country Report December 2017 www.intellinews.com