By Vestnik Kavkaza
The State Duma Committee for Financial Markets has recommended adoption of the draft law ‘On Freewill Declaration of Property and Accounts in Banks by Individuals’ in the first reading. The law on capital amnesty should be adopted by June 1st. “The new law will enable the establishment of legal foundations for involvement of property, which used to stay in the “grey” zone in the economy and reregister the property to its actual owners,” Premier Dmitry Medvedev said.
Commenting on the document, the president of the Association of Russian Banks, Garegin Tosunyan, said that “the idea of maximum attraction of our own investors to the investment spending in the country in the conditions of some kind of sanctions impact on us suggests itself. But it will be effective in the context of appropriate measures on the improvement of the business climate. Because just persuasion of capital to return through amnesty will not be effective, if this capital, while coming back, will not see that it has something to do here. I believe that some guarantees are implied under the amnesty, not only the protection of capital. This, by the way, should not be taken as fact, that if capital has criminal origins then anything and everything is amnestied.
However, if capital, which due to some psychological factors was outside the country, will get adequate guarantees and, on the other hand, opportunity for investments, it will have an effect. Therefore, in this context we need to switch from this measure to the measures of creation of conditions for effective, long-term investment. It is always more comfortable to invest in something close to where you actually live. So I hope that it will be quite effective with the next steps.”
Speaking about the mortgage market, Tosunyan presented data that 2014 gave a pretty decent growth on mortgage payments, about 30%. “The mortgage market is very good in terms of multiplication, it is pulling other areas of production, building materials, everything that is needed for construction. In this sense, the country pays much attention to supporting the mortgage market. Construction mortgage, mortgage lending was such a powerful driver of the whole economy in many other countries. But we cannot say that we are rapidly developing this area, because we still did not hook the area of social housing for the middle and low-income segments. What Canada did, what Switzerland did, what many European and Scandinavian countries did, where they have imposed it on the wider market of consumers of this loan, giving the state guarantees, giving lower rates, and allowing multiplication of other areas of the economy through this segment. But we are gradually moving towards this. I hope that in the current situation, we will support mortgage payments. And the brakes are now on interest rates, and these insinuations about the currency mortgage users, when there is a lot of noise and demonstrations that the banks here are evil individuals, they do not want somehow to take some of the risks that the borrower initially took quite consciously.
So the mortgage market will develop, and I think that it will be one of the drivers of our economy.”
