Russian agricultural sector seems to be doing great, with production and sales steadily growing over the last few months, Russian newspaper Vzglyad wrote.
"Agricultural production shows fantastic results: over last four months, we have a five percent growth in exports of agricultural products […] and an increase of 30.5% in physical volumes of agricultural products' supplies abroad," Russia's First Deputy Minister of Economic Development Alexei Likhachev said cited by the newspaper.
As for January-April 2016, the total value of food and agricultural exports reached 5.11 billion dollars, increasing by 5.4% compared to the same period last year.
However, when we take into account economic situation in general, we see that many other sectors of Russian economy demonstrated significant slowdown.
According to Rosstat data, food and agricultural products were the only export items which showed growth compared to the same period of the previous year. Other product groups were rather characterized by negative dynamics, including metallurgy and machinery which actually benefited from the devaluation of the ruble last year.
In general, the Federal Customs Service has recorded a decrease in domestic exports by 32.2% in the first four months of 2016.
"Thus when we say that agricultural producers managed to significantly increase their share in Russian exports we should take into account that it came together with the decline in most other fields," the newspaper concluded.
