Gennady Melikyan, the bank's first deputy chairman, said that a crisis would not prove "fatal" for the Russian banking system as its resources and financial instruments would allow it to come through any difficulties largely unscathed.
He said the crisis in the West would continue, since "the Western financial system has yet to restructure radically."
Asked how the decline in stock exchange indexes could affect Russian banks, he replied that, "our banks are not so stupid: they have already dumped securities that are now depreciating."
He said Russian banks started reducing their securities portfolio - by 2.3% in August, 12.2% in September, and 12.6% in October 2007, adding however, that in November and December their securities portfolio had grown somewhat.
Melikyan said Russian banks had shown a record equity capital growth in 2007 of 57%.
"That is an absolute record," he said, adding that the CBR's figures were not final, but only an estimate.
He also said Russian banks had increased their assets last year by a total of 43% (as compared to 44.1% in 2006), reaching 20.08 trillion rubles ($800 billion) by the year's end.
