Page 23 - RusRPTJun21

The combination of the long holiday in May, the coronacrisis bounce-back and the recent record-breaking hot weather for May in Moscow have contributed to a surge of shoppers headed to the malls.
The improving foot traffic at shopping malls has yet to turn up in the aggregate retail turnover macroeconomic data. Rosstat reported that retail was down 1.6% y/y in the first quarter, and sales remain depressed by the ongoing compression of real incomes. However, the retail numbers for May should receive a boost from the holiday shopping bump and real income decline is anticipated to halt or even reverse in the second quarter as the government starts to roll out RUB400bn ($5.5bn) of extra social spending that Russian President Vladimir Putin promised during his State of the Nation speech earlier this year.
Russia’s companies are also currently enjoying their strongest profits in five years and may start to pass on some of the windfall to staff with pay rises that could restart a modest version of the virtuous circle of pay rises, consumption, profit and investment that drove much of the rapid growth in the noughties boom years.
2.7 Russian business and consumer confidence
Russia's business confidence index rises to zero for the first time since 2012 when the index briefly went positive for seven months in a row for the first time ever.
23 RUSSIA Country Report June 2021 www.intellinews.com