On 10 September the CBR published the September round of its enterprise monitoring, based on a survey conducted from 1 to 9 September. The headline indicator moved least: the composite business-climate indicator edged from −2.4 in August to −2.3 in September. Almost every figure beneath it moved further, in two opposite directions. Every measure of current conditions fell. Every measure of expectations rose. Firms' expected price growth, converted to an annual rate, reached 7.0% — the highest figure anywhere in that row of the table.

What the sheet reports

The monitoring is published as a one-page “operational note”: one table, two charts and no commentary. The table gives annual and quarterly averages back to 2018, followed by separate figures for the last three months. For July, August and September 2026, the business-climate block shows −3.6, −2.4 and −2.3 for the composite; −9.8, −9.9 and −10.4 for current assessments; and 2.8, 5.5 and 6.3 for expectations.

The two component rows show the divergence. Current assessments of output fell from −9.5 to −10.1, and those of demand from −10.3 to −10.8. Expectations for output rose from 6.4 to 7.1 and those for demand from 4.5 to 5.4. The composite barely moved because it combines current assessments with expectations, which moved in opposite directions.

The CBR does not publish how it combines them. The note gives no weights, and the composite is not the simple average of the pair: in September the two average −2.05 against a published −2.3, and the same small gap appears in August (−2.2 against −2.4) and July (−3.5 against −3.6). The table shows the direction of each part, not the arithmetic that joins them.

Which month the current readings describe

The note's methodological footnote settles a point that is easy to misread:

“The month in which the survey was conducted is indicated; enterprises assess current conditions for the previous month, and the assessment of expectations relates to 3 months beginning with the month in which the survey is conducted.”

So the September round's current readings describe August, and its expectations cover September to November. The −10.4 is a reading about a month that has already ended.

The first negative quarter in the table

The quarterly averages tell the same story. The composite reads 4.6 in Q1 2025, 3.9 in Q2, 1.8 in Q3, 2.7 in Q4, then 0.4 in Q1 2026, 1.4 in Q2 and −2.7 in Q3 2026. That is the first negative quarter in the quarterly range the note prints. The figure is an average of the three months — the note says the yearly and quarterly columns are averages — and it checks: −3.6, −2.4 and −2.3 average to −2.77.

Current assessments at −10.4 are lower than every quarterly average in the table and every annual average except one: 2020, at −12.9. This is not the worst reading the series has ever produced, and the table does not support calling it that.

Prices move the other way

The price block moved in the opposite direction from demand. The balance of expected price changes for the next three months went from 20.5 in July to 21.1 in August and 22.7 in September. Converted to an annual rate — the row the CBR prints underneath — that is 6.0%, then 6.3%, then 7.0%.

7.0% is the largest number in that row. It is above every annual average the sheet gives: 2.1% for 2020, 3.4% for 2021, 5.9% for 2022, 5.2% for 2023, 6.3% for 2024, 5.8% for 2025. It is above every quarterly average too, including the 6.8% of Q1 2025. The row begins in 2020; for 2018 and 2019 the sheet prints no value.

So one round of the survey has the same firms reporting weaker demand for their output in August and planning faster price increases for September to November.

Why a survey of firms is a budget question

Non-oil-and-gas receipts are covering this year's shortfall in oil and gas revenue. That was the subject of our piece on the 80% share: the share rose because the oil-and-gas side fell, not because the rest caught up. VAT is charged on the value of turnover and profit tax on margins, so a tax base can grow in roubles while shrinking in volume. A survey in which demand assessments fall while price plans accelerate describes exactly that combination.

This is a description, not a measurement. The note contains no revenue figure, output volume or turnover, and nothing in it permits an estimate of the effect on receipts. What it offers is speed: the survey closed on 9 September and was published on the 10th, roughly a month ahead of the official statistics for the period it describes.

One caution belongs here. This is not our inflation indicator and must not be read as one. Ours is Rosstat's annual consumer-price inflation, currently 6.0% year on year. The 7.0% above is surveyed enterprises' expectation for their own selling prices over three months, annualised, from a different series and a different publisher. The two are not comparable, and we do not treat them as such.

What this changes in our model

Nothing. The enterprise survey is not one of our eight components and does not enter the index.

Annual inflation scores 96 out of 100 at 6.0% year on year — the strongest of the eight, and the one the CBR has defended hardest. The survey provides context; it is not an input. Overdue receivables, at 9 out of 100, is the series where weakening demand would eventually show up, and it is already the worst of the eight.

The strength index stands at 47 out of 100, in the stress zone. No indicator moved in today's data update.

What we do not know

We do not know the size or composition of the sample. The sheet states no number of respondents, no sectoral weighting and no response rate, so we cannot say how much of the economy these balances describe.

We do not know the composite's weights, and therefore cannot reproduce it from its parts.

We could not check a comparison circulating in the Russian press. Kommersant quotes the economist Dmitry Polevoy as saying that the last time firms assessed current conditions this badly was in March–April 2022. The note carries no monthly series for 2022 — its annual average of current assessments for that year is −6.1 — so the claim cannot be tested against the document we read. We report it as his comparison, not as CBR data.

The same report carries two counterweights absent from the note: analysts from the “Tverdye Tsifry” channel say the acceleration in price expectations may relate in part to the approaching October indexation of utility tariffs; and price expectations actually fell in retail trade and agriculture, the sectors closest to consumer inflation. The one-page note contains no sectoral breakdown, so we cannot confirm either statement from it. Either a wider release exists that we have not seen, or the breakdown comes from elsewhere.