27 Dec 2022 15:53

Russian govt worried by nearly 10% drop in corporate profits, investment could subside - Belousov

MOSCOW. Dec 27 (Interfax) - The Russian government is gravely concerned by the drop of nearly 10% in aggregate corporate profits as it affects the pace of investments, and this is a problem the needs to be addressed, First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov said.

"The real sector's slump in terms of profit, the aggregate financial result, is very worrying. It fell something like 8%-10% year-on-year [in January-October 2022]. But construction has outperformed [in growth], the biggest increase in profits is construction. If we factor construction out, because there is an increase in profits - and I would say not a very natural one as this does not correspond to the scale of the construction itself, the cost per square meter played its role there, although now the cost has begun to decline - then the drop would be even greater," he told the Rossiya-24 TV channel.

"And this means problems with investments: more than 50% of investment is financed by companies themselves. If profit sags, then so will investments. So this is also a problem that has yet to be solved and we have to solve it too," Belousov said.