“Russian retail sales grew at the slowest pace in almost three years in January as unemployment surged and inflation sapped household purchasing power.
Retail sales advanced 3.5 percent from a year earlier, down from 5 percent in December, the Federal Statistics Service in Moscow said in a report today. Economists forecast a 4.8 percent increase, according to the median of 19 estimates in a Bloomberg survey. Unemployment jumped to 6 percent, the highest in 10 months, from 5.3 percent.
The world’s largest energy exporter is counting on the household spending that accounts for about half the economy to maintain growth as the euro area’s slump hurts demand for commodities. The government forecasts consumer-price growth will accelerate again this month, threatening consumer optimism and spending power and keeping pressure on the central bank not to use lower borrowing costs to spur growth.
“We expect consumption to continue steadily trending down,” Elina Ribakova, an economist at Citigroup Inc. in Moscow, said by e-mail before the release. “In the first half of 2012, consumption was boosted by pre-election spending, but since then growth has been slowing.” …”
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