JRL NEWSWATCH: “Russia Ditches Real Income Data That Has Slumped for Five Years” – Bloomberg

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“Russia will stop publishing monthly data that’s shown a slump in disposable incomes for five straight years after the indicator was criticized for using methodology that’s decades out of date. The Federal Statistics Service will start releasing quarterly income data starting next month and historical numbers will be recalculated going back to 2013 …. The new methodology will include data […]

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Nearly 40 Percent of Russians Subsist on Less than 10 US Dollars a Day, Official Figures Show

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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, February 10, 2019) Thirty-seven percent of Russians life on 19,000 rubles or less a month, Rosstat says, a figure that works out to a subsistence of ten US dollars or a less a day, 23.2 percent live on less than 15,000 rubles a month (under seven dollars a day); and 12 percent […]

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Those Fishy-Looking Russian Economic Stats Look A Lot Like Those Fishy-Looking Soviet Economic Stats

File Photo of Kremlin Tower, St. Basil's, Red Square at Night

(Article text ©2019 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Mike Eckel – February 11, 2019 – article text also appeared at rferl.org/a/those-fishy-looking-russian-economic-stats-look-a-lot-like-those-fishy-looking-soviet-economic-stats/29764301.html) When Russia’s state statistics agency released its initial estimates of 2018 economic growth on February 4, it caught economists, investment bankers, financial analysts, and many others off-guard. It wasn’t because the reported gross domestic product (GDP) […]

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Rosstat Can’t be Trusted Until It Becomes Independent, ‘Nezavisimaya gazeta’ Says

File Photo of Kremlin Tower, St. Basil's, Red Square at Night

(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, February 8, 2019) People have long distrusted statistics – Mark Twain’s observation that “there are lies, damned lies, and then statistics’ is a commonplace – but over the last two years and especially over the last two weeks, Russians have come no longer to believe them at all if they are issued […]

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JRL NEWSWATCH: “More controversy as Rosstat upgrades Russian GDP growth to a six-year high” – bne Intellinews/Ben Aris

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“More questions were raised over the veracity of the Russian State Statistical Service’s (Rosstat’s) results after it upgraded its estimates of growth in the construction sector that led to a revision of 2018 growth from 1.6% to 2.3% – the best result in six years …. Russia is emerging from a ‘silent crisis’ … caused by the collapse of oil […]

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RUSSIALINK: “Official Data Vastly Underestimates Russian Emigration – Report” – Moscow Times

Map of Russia and Russian Flag adapted from images at state.gov

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – January 16, 2019) At least six times more Russians are leaving the country than officially estimated, a comprehensive study conducted by the Proekt news outlet said on Wednesday. Proekt’s report highlights discrepancies between official data from the Rosstat federal statistics agency and data compiled by countries where Russians emigrate to. Rosstat estimates 377,000 Russians left […]

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Russians Spend More Than They Earn For First Time Since 1998

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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – February 10, 2016) The spending of Russians exceeded their income in 2015 for the first time in 18 years, the Kommersant newspaper reported Wednesday, citing the Center of Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-term Forecasting. According to the Rosstat state statistics service, the expenditures of Russians exceeded their revenues by 418 billion rubles ($5.3 billion). In 2014, […]

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State Statistics Show Flat Unemployment, Survey Paints Different Story

Russian Migrant Workers file photo

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – August 20, 2015) Despite unemployment levels remaining relatively consistent in the first six months of 2015, more Russians are seeing close friends and family members losing their jobs than in January, according to survey data released by a Russian polling center on Tuesday. According to Russian state statistics agency Rosstat, in January the levels of […]

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