Page 56 - bne_Magazine_October_2017

56 I New Europe in Numbers bne October 2017
Watcom Russian shopping index
Back to school! Watcom shopping index improves after terrible 1H17
Russian bank sector profits RUBbn m/m
Russia went back to school on September 1 and the Watcom Shopping index jumped to nearly 500 as families stocked up on pens and rulers (and more besides), breaking the long run of misery earlier in this year.
Despite recovering incomes 2017 has been a long cold summer of misery for retail. The index measures footfall in the major shopping malls of Moscow in real time using security cameras to count faces, has been running below all the levels for the last four years. The 2017 shopping season has been worst since the index was launched in 2014.
The index results for August (497) improved dramatically, overtaking the result for 2015 (474), but still lagging behind those of 2016 (501) and the best year in the series of 2014 (502).
Russian banks earned more profit in 8M17 than in all of 2016
The profit of Russian banks in January-August 2017 reached RUB997bn ($17.3bn), according to the Central Bank of Russia (CBR). That is a m/m gain of RUB85bn, a slow month for Russia’s banks thanks to the long summer holidays, but is already more than the sector earned in all of 2016. By this time last year banks had earned only RUB533bn and earned RUB945bn for the full year.
"The profit growth continued: profit for eight months in the amount of RUB997bn and has already exceeded the financial result for 2016. Profit is a source of capital growth, and we believe that this is how it should be used first of all,” Nabiullina said at an annual banking conference in Sochi, reports Vedomosti.
Azerbaijan’s economy forecast to shrink 1% this year
Azerbaijan’s economy will shrink by 1% this year, according to the latest Interna- tional Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast, but will return to growth next year with a 2% expansion, the fund said on August 12.
Heavily dependent on oil production, Azerbaijan’s economy has been amongst the hardest hit by the collapse in oil prices at the end of 2014. The government has made a concerted effort to diversify the economy since the country’s boom, but has made little real progress.
In the the middle of the noughties the country delivered an insane 35% annual growth rate after its oil fields were hooked up to the international pipeline export network, but the population is still largely employed by the agriculture sector and remains poor. Progress towards diversification has been slow and piecemeal.
Turkish economy grows at 5.1% in Q2
Turkey’s economy expanded at 5.1% y/y in the second quarter of this year, data from national statistics office TUIK showed on September 11.
This was just below the market expectations for growth of 5.3% y/y. TUIK revised the Q1 growth figure to 5.2% from the previously announced 5%.
TUIK also revised GDP growth for 2016 to 3.2% from 2.9%. The results have been controversial with Commerzbank accusing the government of inflating the figures in a report in September.
Azerbaijan GDP (annual)
Turkey Annual GDP Growth
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