Statistics: Russia April power industry business confidence falls

MOSCOW, Apr 25 (PRIME) -- Russia’s business confidence index decreased 12 percentage points in April to minus 9% compared with December 2017 in the power, gas and steam production industry, the Federal State Statistics Service said in a statement on Wednesday citing a poll of more than 3,000 companies.

“The business confidence index, which reflects generalized entrepreneurs’ behavior, increased to 2% in April 2018 from minus 2% in December 2017 in the mineral extraction sector, and to minus 2% from minus 5% in the processing industry, but fell to minus 9% from minus 3% in provision of power, gas and steam, and in air conditioning,” the statement read.

The economic situation in a company was deemed positive by 11% of managers and satisfactory by 77% of managers in the mineral extraction sector, while the figures for the processing industry stood at 10% and 75%, respectively. The amount of people seeing the current economic situation as bad exceeded the amount of optimists by 1 percentage point in the mineral extraction and by 5 percentage points in the processing industry.

Improvement of the situation in the mineral extraction industry in the next six months was expected by 25% of respondents, 21 percentage points more than the number of respondents forecasting a worse situation. The number of optimists in the processing sector stood at 32% of respondents, 27 percentage points more than the amount of pessimists.

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