Retail sales increase 7.6% y-o-y in 2010

Retail sales in Ukraine grew at a healthy 7.6% y-o-y in real terms in 2010, after -20.6% in 2009, according to the State Statistics Committee. Mykyta Mykhaylychenko: The increase was driven by increasing real disposable income, which added ~8.5%-9.0% over 9M10, although continuous household deleveraging caused household consumption expansion at slower paces. In December retail sales grew 14.7% y-o-y vs. +17.8% y-o-y in November (as we predicted previously, abrupt growth acceleration in November turned to be temporal).