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Industrial Production Takes Vacation
The rates of Russia’s industrial production slowed down to 3.8 percent in August, which is this year’s minimum for the country. The analysts blame the decline on the drop in Gazprom exports because of the warm winter in Europe, traditional August vacations of the nation and the global sub-prime mortgage crisis. Much more likely, however, is that the world market performance will hit Russia a bit later, in the fall to winter of this year.
Industrial production in Russia stepped up no more than 3.8 percent on year in August, according to data of Russia’s Statistics Service. The result is this year’s minimum and it looks particularly disappointing after the surge of the previous months. Indeed, the rates used to be 10.9 percent in June.
Regardless, the eight-month growth is still very promising – 7 percent, which is materially higher than the 5.2-percent forecast of Economic Development and Trade Ministry.
One of the reasons of industry’s slowdown is extremely low speed of mining advance. The indicator went up only 0.5 percent in August and gained 2.4 percent from January through August. What’s more, gas production suffered some losses. The August output equaled 94.2 percent of past year’s August and production calculated for January through August didn’t climb above 99.1 percent of past year’s level.
The pace of processing industry was 5.5 percent in August, i.e. three fold below June. But the cumulative growth calculated from early this year was impressive 10.9 percent. The August slowdown could be blamed mostly on production of construction materials. The cement output gained just 2 percent in the last month of summer, though the seven-month growth was 16 percent.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 19, 2007
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