VTB says plans to return to normal economic operations in July

MOSCOW, May 19 (PRIME) -- Russia's second largest lender VTB hopes to return to normal economic operations in July, Deputy CEO Anatoly Pechatnikov told reporters on Tuesday.

"The first several regions have started to remove the transportation restrictions. We see recovery of trade volumes there and a manifold rise of spending in some segments. We hope very much that May and June will be the last months of severe restrictions and we will be able to return to a normal economic life that will allow people to resume their usual financial activity which was seen before the start of isolation, in July," Pechatnikov said.

He said that Russians cut their card spending by 34% on the year and 42% on the month in April. Online purchases fell by 30% on the year but their share in all transactions rose by 11 percentage points to 34%. One of the few spheres where sales grew was online food retail with a 23% increase. 

VTB’s cash loans fell by more than 50% on the year in April. Loan provision to households at large shrank by 31.5% to 93.5 billion rubles. Mortgages grew by 2% to 58.3 billion rubles.

VTB provided a grace period on retail loans for more than 160 billion rubles while applications totaled almost 190 billion rubles, Pechatnikov said. He added that the bank plans to launch refinancing of loans with other banks and will provide grace periods on them.

The bank plans to provide 250 billion rubles of mortgages with an interest rate of 6.5% and has already given 13.5 billion rubles of such loans.

The official said that the bank forecasts people's deposits with banks to rise 4.7% in Russia at large in 2020.

(72.9798 rubles – U.S. $1)

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