The farther into the future, the brighter – Newspaper Kommersant No. 24 (7469) dated 02/09/2023

In January 2023, the business confidence indices turned positive — in processing, the indicator was 2.7% (1.5% seasonally adjusted), exceeding the records of the whole of 2022, in mining — 1% (1.1%) , it was last higher in March 2022. The indices are calculated by Rosstat based on the results of surveys of managers of 4.4 thousand companies of medium and large businesses.

Positive assessments of the state of the business environment, however, are mainly due to expectations and emotional assessments: for example, the number of optimists who expect an increase in production over the next three months sharply exceeded the number of those who expected it to decline – in mining by 11 percentage points (18 % versus 7%), although since March 2022 the balance of responses has been falling (from 13% to near-zero values). There was a whopping 27 p.p. increase in the processing of optimists (34% vs. 7%) – although the decline in estimates only worsened in 2022, reaching a two-year low by December. In the future, on the horizon of six months, companies look just as brightly – in production, the number of pending improvements by 14 percentage points exceeded the number of those ready for the worst, in the processing of optimists it turned out to be 22 percentage points more.

However, even in assessments of the current economic situation, the optimism of managers is offset by the pessimism of their colleagues: in mining, their number exceeded the number of optimists by 1 percentage point, in manufacturing, by 1 percentage point, more optimistic. The prospects for the future are also weakly supported by current demand estimates (see also the text next to it) – if in production the balance of his estimates was minus 12%, then in processing it was minus 22%, which approximately corresponds to the maximums reached a year ago, de facto demand estimates in January 2023, they “levelled” the failure of 2022.

The fact that expectations are likely to be excessively positive is also evidenced by the company’s management’s assessment of its own capacities, with which future demand can be satisfied. Thus, the average level of production capacity utilization in January 2023 was 57% in mining, and 60% in manufacturing. At the same time, the majority – 79% – of managers in mining and 85% in processing are sure that there are enough of them to meet the demand for products, while a noticeable number – 6% and 11% of respondents – indicate excess capacity.

Oleg Sapozhkov