Page 14 - RusRPTMar20

2.1 ​ ​Watcom
The Watcom index shopping index, that measures traffic in Moscow’s leading shopping malls, unexpectedly picked up at the end of 2019 as real incomes began to rise. It has now caught up to the level of the last five years and is expected to preform better this year than at any time in the last two years.
However, traditional shopping malls are facing increased competition from online stores. At the same time the trend is away from the large shopping malls as Russians increasingly shop in smaller more specialised malls closer to their homes.
2.12 ​Russian M&A, business and consumer confidence
Russian business confidence pick up sharply in January and February rising to -3 and then -2 ​as the outlook for the res of the year improved on the back of the promise of increased government spending.
At the same time confidence remains highly seasonal with confidence always improving after the long winter holidays. In 2019 confidence also improved in January to -2 before rising to -1 in the summer.
At the same time consumer confidence remains depressed at -8.
This year confidence is likely to be depressed by the onslaught of the coronavirus.
Russia’s business confidence index increased by 0.6 percentage point on the year in the processing industries ​and fell by 3.7 percentage points in the mineral production sector in February, the Federal State Statistics Service
14​ RUSSIA Country Report​ March 2020 ​ ​www.intellinews.com