Cbank: Russian banks’ net profit at 197 bln rbl in January

MOSCOW, Feb 20 (PRIME) -- The combined net profit of Russian banks amounted to 197 billion rubles in January, the central bank said on Friday in a banking review.

“This can be attributed to, among other things, foreign currency revaluation as the U.S. dollar rose at the start of the year,” the central bank said.

The pretax profit of Russian banks amounted to 223 billion rubles, the regulator also said.

Banks raised retail loans by 0.8%, while corporate loans decreased by 0.9%. “The monthly retail loans growth slowed down to 0.8% (in December of the previous year it was 1%) due to seasonality, and possibly, the central bank’s measures to cool the segment of unsecured consumer loans,” the bank said.

The bulk of the corporate loan decrease was registered in several systemically important banks

Retail deposits with Russian banks fell 1.5% on the month and grew 10.1% on the year to 30.174 trillion rubles. “The reduction of retail deposits in January (by 1.5%) is typical of this month, perhaps due to a seasonal growth of spending on the New Year holidays and withdrawal of a part of pension payments accrued for two months at the end of the previous year,” the review said.

(63.6873 – U.S. $1)

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