Page 27 - RusRPTMay21

2.12 Watcom Shopping index up 267% y/y
The Watcom shopping index was up a massive 267% year-on-year in week 15 of 2021 (April 12 to 18), but the “gain” was of course because the index is measuring against the first weeks of last year’s pandemic lockdown.
Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin abruptly ordered Muscovites to stay at home in week 13 of the year causing retail sales to crash and ushering in about two months of very strict stay-at-home restrictions.
Retail sales didn't rally start to recover until week 23 (June 1 to 7) when the restrictions started to be eased, but then grew strongly through the remainder of the summer and nearly recovered the same level as a year earlier in week 31 (July 27 to August 2). However, the index, which measures foot traffic at Russia’s largest malls in real time, fell again as summer came to an end as a second wave of the epidemic got under way.
The index’s year-on-year numbers have become fairly meaningless but a comparison with 2019 results shows that foot traffic remains down by about a third from its historical average.
And that was already falling steadily each year as more and more of Russia’s retail business goes online. As reported by bne IntelliNews Russia’s e-commerce is booming and the pandemic has only catalysed the process. The drop in the foot traffic volumes are likely to be permanent as the nature of retail was already going through some big changes before the pandemic started.
In the meantime, while the economic bounce back has started with industrial production going back into the black with 1.1% growth in March, the first growth in a year, retail sales remain underwater on a year-on-year basis, although March is a comparison with the last pre-lockdown month.
Russia's retail trade fell 3.4% from a year earlier in March of 2021, following an upwardly revised 1.5% drop in the previous month and more than the expected 1.3% decrease.
March was the twelfth consecutive month of declines in retail activity amid the pandemic crisis. Sales continued to fall for both food (-6.0% vs -3.0% in February) and non-food products (-0.8% vs 0.1%).
As the standard y/y comparisons have lost their meaning analysts are starting to look more closely at the month-on-month results to try and work out what is actually going on in the economy. And there the news is better.
On a monthly basis, Russia’s retail sales jumped 9.2% in March (the last data available), after a 2.4% drop in the previous month. Considering the first quarter of 2021, retail activity shrank 1.6% over a year ago, according to Rosstat.
27 RUSSIA Country Report May 2021 www.intellinews.com