Cbanker sees Russian banks’ profit at 500 bln rbl in 2016

MOSCOW, Mar 21 (PRIME) -- Russian banks are expected to have a combined profit of 500 billion rubles in 2016, the central bank’s First Deputy Chairman Alexei Simanovsky said Monday.

In 2015, Russian banks’ combined profit fell to 192 billion rubles from 589 billion rubles in 2014.

“I believe that it (banks’ profit) will be twice or even more than twice higher than last year. This is probably around 500 billion rubles. There are more optimistic estimates, but this is not my estimate. My forecast is more cautious,” he said.

Deputy Chairman Mikhail Sukhov said earlier that banks’ profit amounted to 83 billion rubles in January–February and could grow to more than 100 billion rubles in January–March.

Simanovsky also said that overdue debt on personal loans may stop growing in the second half of this year.

“As far as personal loans are concerned, there are forecasts that growth of overdue debt may stop sometime in the second half of the year and can be replaced with an uncertain opposite trend,” he said.

According to the central bank, overdue debt on retail loans grew 2.1% in January and 1.5% in February.

Simanovsky also said the central bank will increase the minimum requirement for banks’ reserves against foreign currency debt on May 1 instead of April 1 planned earlier, as the relevant discussion with the banks has not been finished yet.

(68.4026 rubles – U.S. $1)

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