Operational data of the Bank of Russia for payments in the Russian economy demonstrated that the decline in late July, the business activity may have been temporary. At the beginning of August, almost half of the branches of the incoming payment flows were above the conventional “norms” of the years 2016-2019, in fact a week from 3 to 7 August payments in the economy comparable to pre-crisis. Despite the practical exhaustion of the wave of pent-up demand in the near future payments will be, apparently, above average volume: the process of settlement of pending “epidemic” of debt is clearly not complete.Bulletin “Monitoring of sectoral financial flows” (.pdf) published yesterday by the Bank of Russia, is a vivid evidence of the extreme fragility of the dynamics of financial flows in June—August 2020. The epidemic and the associated sharp change in expectations, business strategies, and practices work in the fields have changed very much. Count with may, the Central Bank indicators of incoming and outgoing flows of payments it is impossible to refer only to constraints of economic activity and to the decisions of the owners about the opening or closing of businesses or divisions. However, the aggregated numbers are quite efficiently (probably quantitative) to determine microtrend in industries, although their dynamics remains conjectural: the Central Bank expects the flow anomalies (enterprise banking customers identifitseerida by OKVED) from the conventional “norm” to the average level of seasonally adjusted daily payments from January 20 to March 13, 2020. While the Central Bank quotes a range, the magnitude of such payments in 2016-2019, along with the index to that of “norms”, of which in some cases is that in the past three years, the volatility of payments in the sectors was quite high.Assessment of the Bank of Russia on the last week of July (along with other indirect indicators) suggests that at the end of the month the effect of pent-up demand in the economy, at least in that volume in which it could be brought quickly, was exhausted: the volume of incoming payments after a period of continuous growth to “normal” is fixed at a low level. However, during the week from 3 to 7 August, the payments continued to recover. On the basis of their dynamics, there is reason to believe that by mid-August, the average for the economy (without taking into account incoming payments in the sector of public administration, as well as oil production, where it continues to lag associated with the transaction OPEC+) restoration of nominally completed — last week, the gap from the “norm” was 0.7%. In reality, the further failures in the dynamics is very likely — in some industries, as can be seen from the graphs, the Central Bank clearly continues the process of closing payments deferred in previous periods, they are not in all cases have the meaning attributed to the implementation of pent-up demand — part of the economy is clearly trying to “hold” the money in the accounts before the appearance of greater certainty, some part had no funds for payment, “the chain” because of similar tactics counterparties.Meanwhile, the Bank continually refines and complicates the calculation methodology. In the last Bulletin of this series of data on incoming payments, taking into account effects from one-off large transactions (analysts of the Bank of Russia, in particular, noted the impact of large transactions in the energy sector on the consolidated performance for the last week of July) with the partially revised data for July. From the point of view of final consumption of households the crisis has already completed: in early August, it was above the “norm” by 7.4%, retail trade — by 22.6%. In the group of industries oriented to consumer demand, the excess of the “norm” at the beginning of August amounted to 7.4%, a week earlier, the payments were behind her by 8.1%.At the beginning of August, exceeding the volume of incoming flows above the “norm” recorded by the Bank in 43 industries of the 86 analyzed, during the first week of August 25 industries “has become the norm” (the gap from it gave way to excess), and only eight Vice versa (exceeding the “norm” was replaced by the gap). Even if the assumption of the Bank of Russia on the full implementation of pent-up demand is true in August and possibly in September with a uniform recovery of economic activity without major upheaval will be the excess of the payment volume above the “norm” in most industries, in addition to continuing to be in severe crisis (primarily air travel, a number of investment sectors). But generally at the beginning of August, Central Bank data show that normalization of the economic situation — the reality: it is impossible to say that the “coronavirus crisis” is completed, but in any case, in its direct economic effects cannot be attributed to problems in the functioning of companies in non-standard conditions. In the future, the payments should increasingly be influenced by the effects associated with a substantial decrease in corporate profits and, perhaps, with the changing savings rate in households.Dmitry Butrin
