By Vestnik Kavkaza
Today the Association of Russian Banks (ARB) is holding its 26th session, at which anti-crisis measures and cooperation between the Central Bank and credit institutions will be considered. The president of the Association of Russian Banks, Garegin Tosunyan, says that “there are some problems that are transferred from year to year, but which now require much more effort to solve. This is, of course, the problem of liquidity, capitalization problem, the problem of reserves.”
According to Tosunyan, the main one is the problem of interest rates: “Many problems must be viewed from this perspective, because the question is not so much a problem of interest of the banking system as a question of consumers of banking services, which are very dependent on the banks, and we are very dependent on consumers. The level of the interest rate which we have today and not for the first time ... It is almost two-digit, rarely during separate segments did it slightly drop below 10%. In this regard we are trying to pursue the position that under the current circumstances, anything above 9% is considered extraordinary. It's OK. Although even 9% is also a very high rate.” At the same time, Tosunyan says that “for our economy to achieve at least some recovery and associated economic growth, we need to lower the rate of the loan, not even on the key rate, below 9%.” The banking system indicates the problems which were listed by Tosunyan, management and oversight issues, and issues of licenses reviews, sanitation.
Meanwhile, economies of some post-Soviet republics depend on Russia. And today they are influenced by the last-year devaluation of the ruble.
According to investing.com, as a result of the first quarter of 2015, the Ukrainian hryvna demonstrated the biggest devaluation among all former Soviet republics – it lost 48.7% against the dollar. In March its exchange rate fell from 15.76 to 23.44. Military activities in Donbas and the economic collapse, which reached 16.6% in the first quarter of the year in comparison with the first quarter of 2014, became reasons for such dynamics. The outflow of capital from the country and the banking sector, default risks and absence of gold and forex reserves to cover the growing demand for foreign currency resulted in such dynamics. By the end of the quarter, significant devaluation of national currencies took place in Azerbaijan 33.7% (from 0.78 to 1.05 manats per $1), Turkmenistan 22.8% (from 2.85 to 3.5 manats per $1). The devaluation of currencies is primarily connected with falling oil prices in 2014 and a necessity to correct state budgets, according to new prices for oil and gas. As for the former Soviet republics, the Moldovan leu fell by 17.7% against the dollar (from 15.62 to 18.38), the Georgian lari fell by 19.5% against the dollar (from 1.86 to 2.23), and the Belarusian ruble – 24.4% (from 11850 to 14740).
