Agriculture in June: Weak reading

Макроэкономика 14.07.2015 In the State Statistics Office's June 2015 monthly report on agriculture released last Friday, the sector rose 0.7% MoM and declined 9.0% YoY in seasonally adjusted terms. For 1H15, the agriculture production index fell 9.3%, a sharper drop than the first five months of the year indicated then the index declined 5.4% YoY for 5M15. The index's steep drop in June is a reflection of the harvesting season, which likely affected the previous year's data for this month. Considering the optimistic expectations for this year's harvest, we expect the index to recover in 2H15. However, as full year 2015 data is not expected to outperform full year 2014, we maintain our full year forecast for agriculture production to come in 4% lower in 2015 than in 2014.