Consumption continues to shrink as Russians forego food, medicine

Moscow

WITH stores from near the Arctic to the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, Magnit PJSC would be the first to know when the Russian consumer is back. Instead, the nation's largest supermarket chain has just come across something it's never seen.

Billionaire Sergey Galitskiy's retailer, which operates almost 13,000 outlets in Russia, said the average purchase fell 2 per cent in the second quarter from a year earlier, dropping for the first time since it began disclosing the figures in 2006. Nationwide data due on Tuesday will show retail sales in June shrank for a record 18th month as a contraction in real wages remained at an annual 1 per cent, according to the median in Bloomberg surveys.