By Andrei Skvarsky.
Sberbank, Russia’s biggest lender, has cut interest rates for corporate loans by between 04% and 1.4% per year as from Wednesday.
“We believe that this will have a very positive effect on the market,” a statement released by Sberbank on Thursday quoted the bank’s deputy chief executive Andrei Donskikh as saying. “We anticipate higher demand for loans from corporate clients, especially clients from medium-scale and big business.”
“We forecast the corporate [loan] portfolio for the market as a whole to grow by between 13% and 14%. We’ll try to run ahead of this and show growth of up to 15%,” Donskikh said. “Sberbank’s corporate portfolio is 7.2trln rubles [$229bn].”
A day earlier, Sberbank announced it was reducing deposit interest rates and bond yields for retail clients. The rates were going down by between 0.5 and 0.75 percentage points. According to Moscow business daily Kommersant, the move was designed to make up for losses to be caused by the lower rates on corporate loans.
Kommersant points out that Wednesday’s corporate loan rate reduction is the second time this year that Sberbank is resorting to the measure – the bank trimmed the rates by about one percentage point with effect from March 1.
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