Russia's largest companies increased their incomes last year three times slower than a year earlier, according to the RBC 500 rating.
The rating's participants increased their revenues by 4.2% in 2016, although a year earlier the growth rate was 13.6%. The size of their total revenue amounted to 66.3 trillion rubles. This is just over 50% in the total revenue of all Russian companies, the experts of the Analytical Credit Rating Agency (ACRA) noted on the basis of the national accounts of Rosstat for the past year.
The share of revenue of RBC 500 in the total revenue of Russian business has slightly decreased - it was 50.8% at the end of 2015.
"The growth of the largest companies in 2015 was higher than in 2016, when the economy was recovering and slipped by only 0.2%," RBC says.
The oil and gas sector accounted for the largest revenue (21.4 trillion rubles, or 32.3%). The financial sector (13%) is second, metals with mining and trade are third and fourth, respectively (8%). A year earlier, revenues of oil and gas companies accounted for 34.4% of revenues of all participants in the rating. The change was caused by the strengthening of the ruble.
According to the number of companies represented in the rating, the financial sector (54 participants) retained the leadership, and the second position was taken by trade (53 participants), overtaking oil and gas (50 participants).
The number of newcomers decreased from 84 to 45, and the first six positions headed by Gazprom remained unchanged. The number of state-owned companies in the rating is much lower than the number of private enterprises (86 against 396). A combined indicator of state-owned companies is 28.5 trillion rubles, and 36.3 trillion of rubles private ones.
Advisor on macroeconomics to the CEO of the 'Opening-Broker' brokerage house, economist Sergey Hestanov, speaking to Vestnik Kavkaza, noted in the first place that companies' income depends not only on economic growth as a whole, but also on fiscal pressures and the intraeconomic situation.
"The fact is that economic growth is measured as the gross value of all goods and services produced in the territory over a given period of time. Usually, it's a year or a quarter. All goods and services, including tariffs of natural monopolies, are taken into account. Due to which business and GDP dynamics coincide only when economy growth is high. In Russia, for example, these indicators coincided in the period from 2000 to 2008," the expert said, specifying that this situation does not happen too often.
According to him, the current state of Russiaэы economy is conditionally called "near zero." "Accordingly, the link between the dynamics of companies' profits and the economy's dynamics has greatly weakened. In addition, most of the companies have recently faced the problem of falling solvent demand, which has led to the decline in profitability of large Russian companies," explained
