That, combined with continued government subsidies for utilities and a flat 13% income tax, means that the average Russian has a larger discretionary income, as a percentage of pay, than his counterparts in the West, says Natalia Zagvozdina, deputy head of equity research at Renaissance Capital, a Moscow investment bank. Revenues from rising oil prices have been flowing into the country for much of this decade, but Russians initially were afraid to spend freely because they had been burned in the country's 1998 financial crisis, says Vladimir Pantyushin, an economist at Renaissance Capital. Now they are on a spending spree because many of them lack the sorts of goods -- like refrigerators and televisions -- that Americans and Western Europeans take for granted, Pantyushin says. Browder, who runs the largest investment firm specializing in Russia, isn't concerned about a drop in oil prices sapping the economy's growth and damping consumer confidence. read more
[Tags]russians, consumer, russian, , goods, moscow, cosmetics beauty news[/Tags]