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In Russia’s capital the trend has changed with developers choosing to build smaller retail projects that are closer to the communities their server and more specialist in nature with a larger share of entertainment in the retail outlet mix. The largest retail prject developed in the first half of this year was 502sqm.
Yekaterinburg has the highest average monthly salary among themnki, or cities with more thanmn inhabitants, which is one of the key indicators for the development of shopping centres, explains experts Knight Frank.
There are a total of 15 cities of Russia with a population of more than 1mn people. The volume of retail space in the last five years (from the first half of 2013 to the first half of 2018) grew by 55% to 16mn square meters. Moscow and St. Petersburg account for 57% of this amount, but now the weight of activity is moving into the regions again.
Ufa in Bashkortostan was the home to the most active retail development where the volume of quality retail space has grown 2.3-fold over the last five years from 223,000 to 519,000sqm in the oil rich region.
The volume of stores in Perm has doubled in the same period (up 122% to 262,000sqm), Yekaterinburg (up 121% to 999,000sqm) and Nizhny Novgorod (up 106% to 660,000sqm).
The least increase in the volume of retail space over the past five years in Russia was in Kazan, the the capital of Tatarstan, which increased by only 31sqm to a total of 357sqm per 1000 inhabitants. For many years Kazan was the leader in the supply of retail space per 1000 inhabitants, but the market is now saturated.
The trade turnover of the Belarusian-Russian cement market totalled $400mn over the last four years, the press service of the Belarusian Architecture and Construction Ministry told BelTA on August 3. Cooperation between Belarusian and Russian cement industry companies was invigorated when a bilateral document was signed in 2014 to allow the sale of Belarusian cement in Russia via Eurocement Group. The measure allowed the demand for Belarusian cement to be satisfied on the Russian market. As much as $400mn worth of cement was exported in 2014-2018 as a result. The ministry is currently in talks with the Russian holding company Eurocement Group on expanding the business. Belarusian Architecture and Construction Minister Anatoly Cherny and Eurocement Group president Mikhail Skorokhod the discussed results of joint work in the first half of 2018 and future tasks.
9.1.5 Retail sector news
The Russian cigarette business is being crushed by a combination of Russian’s growing interest in healthier lifestyles and a government public health drive that has seen taxes on cigarettes soar. Russian cigarette market will drop by 30% from 2017 to 2022 with 182bn units sold, according to Euromonitor International estimates cited by Vedomosti daily. In monetary terms the sales are expected to decline by 11% to RUB1.39 trillion ($20bn) annually. The market was growing until 2018, but the growth of the excise duties on tobacco will slow it down. In 2019 a 10% increase in excise duty is planned, which will fall to 4% in 2020 and then be indexed to annual consumer inflation thereafter. Other reasons for slowing market are alternative tobacco products, such as electronic cigarettes, which are very popular in Russia. The general tendency to pursue healthy lifestyles has also strengthened, with the share of smokers willing to quit growing from 57% to 70%, while the share of regularly exercising Russians up from 12% in 2016 to 31% in 2017, according to estimates. At the same time growing prices push the grey market for tobacco, with the share of illegal sales up by 0.6pp to 4.6%, according to
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