SberIndex: ‘foreign’ spending back in Russia

Between December 14 and 20, according to SberIndex analysts, consumer spending kept rebounding and added 1.1% y-o-y after losing 2.8% y-o-y a week earlier.

A noticeable consumption revival since the beginning of December looked suspicious, and the last week's transition to metrics that were higher for no apparent reason required additional research.

SberIndex analysts found out that the dynamics were due to the fact that spending outside the country had come back to Russia. Tourist flow had been growing since early December 2019; however, it's not the case this year. Given how much people spend abroad, instead of +1.1% y-o-y there was a 6.0% y-o-y decline in aggregate spending.

In other words, domestic demand was backed by locked spending outside Russia.

Ahead of the New Year, the service sector also started rebounding (-17.6% y-o-y).

The December activity of consumers in the Airline Tickets segment is maintained. On December 14-20, spending in this category lost only 10.4% y-o-y. However, the new London strain is likely to trigger a decline in the travel demand again after the New Year holidays.

The number of active outlets keeps climbing steadily now being 5.0% above February, with growth spotted across all the key areas (food retail, other products and services).

When publishing the materials, a reference to SberIndex (www.sberindex.ru) is mandatory.

SberIndex.ru is an analytical website by Sberbank that illustrates how life in Russia has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, you can find three key indexes on the website, all of them based on anonymized data. These are an incidence model, the consumer activity index, and consumer activity changes. The all-new Business section features the evolution of gross payroll and change in small business activity. The website also has other studies, including all SberIndex lab ones (former SberData).