Statistics: Russia’s Aug business confidence rises in production

MOSCOW, Aug 24 (PRIME) -- The Russian business confidence index increased 8 and 6 percentage points respectively in the mineral production and processing industries in August, the Federal State Statistics Service said in a statement on Thursday citing a poll of more than 3,000 companies.

“The business confidence index, which reflects generalized entrepreneurs’ behavior, increased to 1% in August 2017 from minus 7% in December 2016 in the mineral production sector, and to minus 2% from minus 8% in the processing industry, but fell to 2% from 6% in provision of power, gas and steam, and in air conditioning,” the statement read.

The economic situation in their companies was deemed positive by 11% of managers and satisfactory by 74% of managers in the mineral extraction sector, while the figures for the processing industry stood at 10% and 74%, respectively. The number of people seeing the current economic situation as bad exceeded the number of optimists by 3 percentage points in the mineral extraction and by 6 percentage points in the processing industry.

Improvement of the situation in the mineral extraction industry in the next six months was expected by 26% of respondents, 20 percentage points more than the number of respondents forecasting a worse situation. The number of optimists in the processing sector stood at 29% of respondents, 22 percentage points more than the amount of pessimists.

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