Belarusian banks were badly bruised by the country's economic crisis of 2011, and after a year of recovery the sector is again bracing for a downturn as the former Soviet republic's current account deficit yawns wider, growth sputters and the Belarusian rouble steadily loses value.
“We've been through two downturns in the past five years and we are getting ready for a third,” says Krzysztof Spyra, a member of the supervisory board of Idea Bank Belarus, a unit of Poland's Getin Holding that has been expanding aggressively in the consumer loan and instalment business in Belarus. “It seems that part of the model here is a crash and burn every two years. Still, we survived the other two downturns and we'll do the same again,” he adds.
