Business optimism in Russia has fallen to its lowest level since 2009

According to a study by S&P Global, the optimism index of Russian companies for the next 12 months has collapsed immediately by 29 percentage points, from 34 to 5%. Entrepreneurs have not had such gloomy expectations since 2009.

“Business sees a threat to further development in rising prices, the negative impact of sanctions on external demand and the decline in the purchasing power of Russians”, - RBC notes.

Experts came to gloomy conclusions about the prospects for business development in the Russian Federation based on a survey of 12,000 companies around the world, of which 500 are based in the Russian Federation. Of these, half are industrial enterprises and half are service providers.

Among the difficulties, respondents also note problems with the purchase of raw materials abroad and disruption of supply chains due to sanctions, Forbes writes.

According to the agency, now the pessimism of companies expecting a decline in demand for products from the next year turned out to be even 1 percentage point worse than during the covid pandemic in 2020.

Today, Russian businessmen are the least optimistic among representatives of the 12 largest economies in the world. No country has experienced such a collapse of hopes for a normal business after the start of the military special operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, as in Russia. In manufacturing, pure pessimism about employment is recorded for the first time on record. Enterprises are afraid of rising labor costs, this is especially worrying for representatives of manufacturing industries.

Meanwhile, experts believe that after some time the market in the Russian Federation will recover, and Russian business will have new niches and prospects due to the departure of Western companies.