The international rating agency Fitch expects that corporate lending in Russia will grow by 5% in 2016 and retail loans will increase within 3%, the agency’s analyst Anton Lopatin said.
“In the first half of the year corporate lending adjusted for currency revaluation increased by 2%. Reasons of this growth – rates have decreased, correspondingly, corporate borrowers show interest in loans, moreover, banks that received OFZ bonds were obliged to boost lending by 1% to certain sectors”, he said.
Corporate and retail deposits with banks grew by around 4% in the first half of the year. Fitch expects the figure to increase by 10% in 2016.
Fitch projects the main profit of the Russian banking sector at around 300 billion rubles in 2016.
Banks will repay the main debt to the central bank within 6 to 12 months, Fitch analysts also said. As of the end of June, the debt stood at 1.4 trillion rubles.
Net deposits with the central bank will grow to 2 trillion rubles by the end of the year, Fitch also said.
The government spent around 3.3 trillion rubles, or around 4% of 2015 gross domestic product, to support and clean up the banking sector in 2013-2015.
“Around half of this sum was spent on recapitalization of operating banks, and the second half on bailouts of bankrupt banks and payments to their depositors”, the agency said. (Prime/Business World Magazine)
