The sales volumes of Beliy Veter Tsifrovoy, the consumer electronic chain, dropped by 12% in the first half of 2009 compared with the year earlier. At the same time, the chain store’s debts to banks and suppliers have gone down by 630 million RUR since the beginning of the year.

The company’s experts report the Russian consumer electronics market shrank by something between 32% and 45% in the six months of 2009 against the first half of 2008.

‘Like most of our counterparts, we had a 28% decrease in sales in the first half of the year compared with the year earlier. The sales of laptops and digital video cameras plummeted particularly low. Nevertheless, we managed to raise our communicator and cell phone sales, whereas our game console sales have remained the same,’ the company’s General Director Ilya Timchenko announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg.