“The Country of Resellers” – FBK evaluated the trade industry. “How Much is Russia” Study

Another stage of evaluation of Russian economy carried out by FBK analysts under the project of “How much is Russia: 10 years later” focused on trade and public catering. For the last decade the industry value increased by 24.8% and amounted to 689.4 bn roubles in comparable prices as at the beginning of 2013.

While doing the survey the FBK analysts also detected a number of changes and trends. The total capital assets of trade and public catering in terms of value as on January 1, 2003 amounted to 429.2 bn roubles, over 10 years they have grown in nominal terms by more than 34 times and as on January 1, 2013 amounted to 14.6 bn roubles in trade and 176.5 bn roubles in public catering and hotel business. The share of trade, restaurants and hotels in the total volume of capital assets in the economy has grown by 13.8 times – from 1.7% in 2002 to 23.4% in 2012. None of the industries under the analysis has demonstrated such impressive dynamics of capital assets growth.

Igor Nikolayev, the study director, the FBK Institute of Strategic Analysis director, also pointed out to the growth of the number of wholesale trade organizations in the past decade. If in 2003 the number of such sellers was 308.9 thousand, which exceeded the number of retail trade organizations by 2.2 times (138.8 ths), in 2013 that correlation increased up to 2.7 times (700 ths organizations as compared with 262.7 ths retail trade organizations).

Igor Nikolayev clarifies that the basic difference between the organizations of wholesale and retail sale does not boil down to the fact that wholesale deals with large lots of goods, as many people would still like to think, but that such trade provides first of all for subsequent resale of goods.

No wonder that for the last 10 years the portion of trade and public catering in the national GDP was 21%, which is about 1.5 times higher than a similar indicator in the developed countries. For example, in 2012 in Germany that indicator was 10.8%, in Finland – 12%, in France – 13.8%. Russia still remains to be “the country of resellers”.

Detailed findings of the study can be found at skolko.ru.