OREANDA-NEWS. May 25, 2010. Rosstat has published a set of April statistics revealing that retail trade rose 4.2% YoY on the back of 4.8% growth in real disposable incomes. Investments were up 2.3% YoY, though construction remained below last year’s level (-2.3% YoY), reported the press-centre of OTKRITIE Financial Corporation.

View: We believe the April results are marginally positive, primarily because they show improvement on the investment side. Investments increased in YoY terms for the second consecutive month, though this growth is still quite fragile. Nevertheless, we see improving trends in construction materials and expect to return in growth for construction in May. However, on a 4M10 basis, both construction and investment still languish below last year’s very weak figures.

On the consumption side, April held no positive surprises, as the 4.2% YoY growth in retail trade was fully in line with consensus and with our forecast. The figure indicates no improvement over the trend of previous months. We still see trade growing slower than disposable incomes. The latter surprised markets a bit to the negative even though wages exceeded expectations. This underlines stagnation in consumption trends, which is a concern given the strong efforts by the government to increasing social spending.