Page 53 - RusRPTSept21

4.5.3 Retail sector dynamics
Retail sales growth in June printed at 10.9% y/y after 27.2% in May (below 11.9% Bloomberg consensus). According to our estimates, this implied 0.2% m/m decrease seasonally adjusted – the first monthly decline since November-December 2020 – previous high COVID-19 wave.
Retail sales in the second quarter were 5% higher than two years ago and now less than 5% lower than in the second quarter of 2014, when retail was at its highest levels in 2010. However, seasonally adjusted sales have increased rather slowly in recent months. Services provided to households (excluding government services) continued to recover in the second quarter and were now relatively slightly lower than two years ago. Consumers' expectations of the state of their own finances over the next year have been reasonable in Rosstat's quarterly survey this year and quite good in the Russian Central Bank's monthly survey. However, according to a central bank survey, expectations fell sharply in July.
The recovery in consumption has not come so much from real household disposable income, which in the second quarter was still less than one% lower than two years earlier. Consumption this year has been strengthened by the fact that net household savings have been very low compared to last year's
53 RUSSIA Country Report September 2021 www.intellinews.com