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Processing Industries Accelerated in Feb
Russia’s official statistics confirm the assumption of Economic Development Minister Svetlana Nabiullina that processing industries of the country are growing anew.
Indeed, although the rates slowed down from the 2007 monthly average of 6 percent to 4.6 percent in January of 2008, the annual acceleration reached 11.4 percent in February. The industry grew 7.5 percent that month vs. just 4.5 percent posted in January. Regardless, the growth was 6 percent taken for January and February on aggregate vs. 7 percent manifested in the first two months of 2007.
The analysts attribute the revival of rapid upsurge in processing industries to investment policy of 2007. “The investment demand, particularly in processing industries remains very high. Capital investments are stepping up materially. With regard to the lag between investments and growth, the industrial growth will be very high in the nearest future,” said Sergei Ulatov from the World Bank.
Of interest is that the structure of industrial growth doesn’t copy past year’s indicators. Although the construction-related industries were again the leaders of January and February, the rates of bricks and cement production slowed down significantly. At the same time, the production of generators for steam, gas and hydraulic turbines soared 3.6 fold, the production of gas turbines went up 2.3 fold and the output of caterpillar tractors increased 2.3 fold. But that acceleration couldn’t be regarded as some trend, as it mostly depends on one-time orders.
The surge in the gas production attained in January and February could be hardly attributed to Gazprom efforts – the monopoly blamed past year’s drop on the warm winter and decline in demand. At the same time, the rates of the oil production materially slowed down in the first two months of this year.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 20, 2008
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