Monthly Salary in Russia Averages $550 in 2007
// Russia’s retail turnover reaches 11 trillion rubles
Personal incomes in Russia went up 10 percent in real terms, the national Statistics Agency said Tuesday reporting the first economic results of 2007. Average monthly salary went up 27 percent last year to 13,518 rubles. This buoyant income growth sent retail profits up to 10.8 trillion rubles. Analysts say that it is consumer and investment boom that fueled economic growth in 2007.
Personal incomes are on the steady rise, the Russian Statistics Agency said on Tuesday. Real disposable income (considering inflation) went up 10.4 percent in 2007 compared to the data in 2006. The growth in 2006 was 10 percent. Nominal income added 22.7 percent to the average monthly income of 12,490 rubles in 2007. It is, however, somewhat less that the growth in 2006 – 23.5 percent. Average monthly income was 9,911 rubles then. Personal incomes have been growing mostly because of higher salaries which have been on a steady rise throughout 2007. Average salary went up 26.7 percent, compared to 2006, to 13,518 rubles. In 2006, it rose 24.5 percent to 10,736 rubles. In real terms, average salary added 16.2 percent in 2007, compared to 13.5 percent in 2006.
Judging from the Statistics Agency’s data, we could say that a traditional December jump in incomes when some employees get year-end bonuses was not as big as it was in 2006. Income in real terms climbed 37.3 percent in December 2007, compared to November. In 2006, incomes went up 43.7 percent between November and December. In 2007, the average income in nominal terms was 19,639 rubles, or 26.2 percent higher than in December 2006. In December 2006, personal income in nominal terms reached 14,757 rubles and was 20.5 percent higher than that in December 2005. Average salary in December 2007 was 18,467 rubles, 30 percent higher than in December 2006 and 26 percent higher than in November 2007. In December 2006, the growth was 25.8 percent, compared to December 2005 and 27 percent against the data in November 2006.
Salaries in real terms moved up 16.2 percent in December 2007 against December 2006 and 24.6 percent against November 2007. In December 2006, it added 15.4 percent against December 2005 and up 26 percent compared to November 2006.
The buoyant growth of personal incomes in 2007 gave an impulse to retail turnover that rose 15.2 percent to reach 10.8 trillion. Largely unchanged since 2007, foods accounted for 45.3 percent of sales and nonfoods took up 54.7 percent in 2007.
The retail and investment boom fueled economic growth in 2007. Investments in fixed capital went up 21.1 percent to 6.4 trillion rubles for the first time since 2001. The figure by the Statistics Agency is 1.1 percent higher than that in the prognosis by the Economic Development and Trade Ministry. Alexander Kiruta, director of the Center for Social and Economic Surveys at the Russian Academy of Science, believes that slack growth in December “don’t make a big difference” for the overall increase in incomes and describes it as only “an early estimate of the Statistics Agency.”
“Economic growth in 2007 was much higher,” the expert said. “That’s why incomes are growing. It’s quite strange that we did not see a big jump in incomes at the end of the year as any election campaign entails higher budget spending and investments. But we also need to consider higher inflation at the end of the year.” Mr. Kiruta added that with this income growth “it is the rich who were at the winning end as the impact of inflation is different on different income groups.”
Daria Nikolaeva and Alexey Shapovalov
All the Article in Russian as of Jan. 30, 2008
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