Last month, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, responding to business executives’ complaints against Sberbank and VTB Group, the country’s largest banks, ordered Finance Minister Anton Siluanov to look into the issue and fix the causes of unjustified growth of interest rates on bank loans for companies. These trends do not correlate with the normalization of bank liquidity problems, growth in banks’ correspondent accounts with the Central Bank from 300bln rubles to 1 trillion rubles and decreasing interbank interest rates to about 7%.
All this suggests sufficient funds in the economy. Consequently, the prime minister wants to find out what's going on at Sberbank and VTB, and generally, why the banks are hiking interest rates. “We must take steps to eliminate conditions contributing to unjustified growth in banks’ interest rates; otherwise our bankers will further accelerate inflation in the country.”
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