Russia supermarket

Magnit has announced that its sales for May jumped 31 per cent on a year-on-year basis, up to R13.67bn (€315m), driven by the launch of 46 new outlets in the country.

The store openings pushed the group's total portfolio in Russia to 2,763, well up on the 2,287 outlets Magnit was operating at the end of May last year.

For the first five months of the year, sales increased by 35 per cent compared with 2008 to R65.05bn (€1.5bn), Reuters reported.

In April, the discount retailer announced that net profit for 2008nearly doubled to hit US$187.9m (€133.7m), boosted by year-on-year sales growthof 40 per cent to US$5.3bn (€3.8bn).