Cbanker: Russian economy recovers in line with forecasts

MOSCOW, Sep 3 (PRIME) -- The Russian economy is recovering in accordance with the forecasts of the central bank, Central Bank Chairwoman Elvira Nabiullina said on Thursday at a meeting of the Association of Banks of Russia.

The regulator expects Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) to fall 4.5–5.5% in 2020, to rise 3.5–4.5% in 2021, and to grow 2.5–3.5% in 2022.

“We have seen a step-by-step recovery of business activity in the past few months, the financial markets are stabilizing, and lending is becoming more active. I should say that the fall of the economy was smaller than many people expected, and recovery is going on in accordance with our forecasts though it is uneven,” Nabiullina said.

She also said that Russian banks may make a profit of around 1 trillion rubles in 2020 taking into account normalization of the economic situation. In January–July, the combined net profit of Russian banks stood at 761 billion rubles.

The share of non-cash transactions in Russia’s retail sector increased by 5 percentage points in April–June to 69% as of the end of June, she said.

She also suggested that the central and the market define regulation of their ecosystems together. “We’ve created a working group in the Bank of Russia, and we will submit a consultative report very soon,” she said.

“We as a central bank would like to see healthy competition between several players, and conditions of access to the ecosystems that are being created should be open, non-discriminatory for all suppliers. Consumers should have a chance to choose the most comfortable products and services.”

(73.8588 rubles – U.S. $1)

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