Russian corporate profits up 19% in March after plummeting 55% in Feb - Rosstat
MOSCOW. May 27 (Interfax) - Combined pre-tax profit at medium and large enterprises (profit less losses) in Russia fell grew 18.8% year-on-year in March 2014 to 504.6 billion rubles, the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) said.
Corporate profits less losses had fallen 55% in February and 10.6% in January.
Rosstat said profits fell 17.7% year-on-year in Q1 2014, less than the 29.1% by which they fell in the same period of 2013.
Rosstat said that in January-March 2014, 35,600 organizations had a total profit of 2.174 trillion rubles, while 20,700 organizations had losses totaling 899.6 billion rubles.
Companies working in the extractive sector had combined profits rising 34% year-on-year to 552.5 billion rubles in Q1. The manufacturing sector had 80.9 billion rubles, down 75% year-on-year, although it saw losses of 75.4 billion rubles for January-February. The utilities sector (electricity, gas and water) had 133.1 billion rubles in combined pretax profit, up 4.8% year-on-year.
In wholesale and retail trade, automotive transport maintenance, motorcycles, household goods and personal items, combined profits were down 10.3% to 401 billion rubles. They fell 34% to 106.5 billion rubles in transport and communications; grew 53.4% to 23.2 billion rubles in agriculture, hunting and forestry; fell 50.1% to 2.8 billion rubles in construction and grew 17.2% to 6.9 billion rubles in fisheries and aquaculture.
The share of Russian enterprises that incurred losses was up 0.2 percentage points compared to January-March 2013 at 36.7%.
