Chairwoman: Cbank sees no need in reducing Russians’ debt burden

WASHINGTON, Oct 18 (PRIME) -- The central bank plans to assess the recently launched indicators of Russians’ debt burden, and sees no necessity in its further reduction, Chairwoman Elvira Nabiullina told reporters on the sidelines of a conference of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) held on Friday.

Russians’ debt burden grew to 10.4% in January–June, a record since 2014. On October 1, the central bank introduced additional measures to cap debt in unsecured consumer lending by launching markups to risk ratios.

“We have indeed introduced new debt burden indicators since October 1, and will now monitor how effectively it works. If it is necessary, we will adjust it… From our point of view, no additional steps are needed,” Nabiullina said.

She added that the central bank has made some efforts to restrict consumer lending growth since the middle of 2018.

“We have taken a number of measures, we began to take action in the middle of past year, when risk ratios for this type of lending were raised. In our opinion, the steps are effective. First, financial institutions gain an additional capital cushion. If the situation worsens, the capital is used to absorb the loss.”

She also said that the central bank sees no problem with U.S. dollar liquidity in Russia, and has a set of tools to smooth possible fluctuations. She added that the share of non-residents holding domestic OFZ government bonds is stable at nearly 30% and is unlikely to change soon.

The central bank is considering a legislative basis to allow local banks to set negative interest rates for corporate euro-denominated deposits, but sees the issue as non-urgent.

The central bank and the Finance Ministry will continue to discuss sending 100% of the regulator’s dividends from top bank Sberbank to the budget, which was introduced as a temporary step in 2018 and prolonged for a year on Thursday.

The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) states, namely Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, are interested in a joint instant payment system, but no specific steps have been made to develop it yet.

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