Huge interest rates in Russian banks, which exceed the cost of loans in the most exotic African countries, have forced Russian entrepreneurs to look for money in neighboring countries.
Sberbank has offered Russian companies to take out loans in Belarus, where it has a subsidiary bank, Frank Media writes. In Belarus, the refinancing rate is only 9.5%, and the average rate on corporate loans in Belarusian rubles from August to September has grown to only 10.27% per annum, according to data from the National Bank of Belarus. Rates on short-term loans for small and medium-sized businesses in Russia are approaching 30% per annum.

The scale of Russian subsidiary banks in Belarus is smaller, and so are the loan amounts. The lending market in Belarus is 40 times smaller than in Russia. The Central Bank has warned that when attracting loans in foreign currency, companies should take into account the currency risk and exchange rate fluctuations.

The lack of affordable loans in Russia threatens the collapse of industries. Thus, the CEO of the Chelyabinsk Forging and Press Plant Andrey Gartung said that he expects a sad development of events. “No competitive business can work with loans at 27% per annum, when your Chinese competitors receive loans cheaper than 5% per annum,” complained Gartung. Gartung’s gloomy assessments were confirmed by other top managers. The industry is under the threat of mass bankruptcies of factories, said the head of Rostec Sergey Chemezov. “With such an interest rate, all the profit that we anticipate is eaten up by the interest that we are forced to pay to the bank. If we continue to work like this, then most of our enterprises will go bankrupt,” Chemezov said.

(C)THE MOSCOW TIMES 2024