“We don’t have a competitive, level playing field with foreign banks,” says Andrei Kazmin, chairman of Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank, which has a massive 62% of the deposit market.
Speaking to The Banker in Moscow, Mr Kazmin is seriously worried about the low capital base of the banking sector and its inability to meet the demand for credit expansion, which is critical to the country’s ambitious growth targets. Although Russia’s banking assets doubled between December 2001 and June 2004 to reach R5733bn ($198bn), Mr Kazmin is concerned by “the lack of access to long-term funds to be able to provide long-term credits such as mortgages”.
