The Central Bank of Russia reported the decline of retail credit share in the overall amount of credits that the banks provided in the third quarter of this year. The poster reads: "The key choice. Sberbank of Russia."
Photo: Pavel Soloviev
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Credit Line Bends to the West
The global crisis of liquidity has changed the structure of credit portfolio of Russia’s banks. The Central Bank of Russia reported the decline of retail credit share in the overall amount of credits that the banks provided in the third quarter of this year. At the same time, the banks have evidently set to accumulating money denominated in foreign exchange and transferring it to accounts with foreign banks. The amount surged 47 percent to above 1 trillion rubles in the last three months.
According to the Q3 bank survey that CBR promulgated yesterday, the share of individual credits in the overall credit portfolio of banks went down first time over the recent years. It narrowed from 22.8 percent at close of the first quarter to 22.5 percent as of October 1, 2007. The slowdown is blamed on September results, when the banks provided no more than 98 billion rubles to individuals. But the amount equaled 132 billion rubles in August and 120 billion rubles in July.
The same September, the credits, deposits and other funds transferred to nonresident-banks surged from 641.1 billion rubles to 1,004 billion rubles, manifesting the growth of 56.6 percent. The credits granted by banks to non-financial institutions stepped up from 7,131.9 billion rubles to 7,729 billion rubles (up 8.4 percent) in the first month of the fall.
The analysts say the September results could be attributed to the aftereffects of the global liquidity crisis. “In the environment of low liquidity, the banks prefer to keep corporate clients and reduce the amount of retail crediting. Working with corporate clients is cheaper, and once the credit rates went up, they have become even of greater profit for the banks,” said Natalia Orlova, senior economist at Alfa Bank.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 31, 2007
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