HSE says Russia’s industry weathers lengthy recession

MOSCOW, Jan 16 (PRIME) -- An opinion poll of directors at 3,200 Russian industrial facilities, based in 82 Russia’s regions, has demonstrated that the country’s industry has weathered a lengthy recession, Moscow’s Higher School of Economics (HSE) said in a report on Tuesday.

“A summary of opinions of big and medium-sized industrial facilities’ heads has shown… final recovery from a lengthy recession of 2015 and a part of 2016,” the report quoted a HSE statistics research center Georgy Ostapkovich as saying.

Adaptation to the new economic reality and a relative macroeconomic stabilization, including inflation and a currency rate were mentioned among the factors ensuring the recovery. Ostapkovich said that most entrepreneurs call excessive volatility of these two factors together with demand problems and economic uncertainty to be the reasons for limited production and a lower strategic planning horizon for modernization, investment and innovations.

“The December business confidence index (BCI) in the mining, processing and power distribution industries remained flat on the month at +1%, -1% and -3%, respectively. The best BCI figures are seen in the processing sector with a 5-6 percentage points rise from the recessionary 2015,” the report read.

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