MOSCOW, April 3 (RIA Novosti) – Russia's Finance Minister slammed excessive interest rates on loans offered by Russian banks to consumers and enterprises, in an address to the Association of Russian Banks’ annual congress in Moscow on Wednesday.
“I received a confidential offer recently: they [bankers] wanted to give a consumer loan personally to me, Anton Siluanov… offering an interest rate of 23 percent. That rate level is exorbitant,” Siluanov said.
Russian banks should cut the cost of loans both to individuals and the real sector of the economy, the finance minister said.
Loans to enterprises are granted at an average interest rate of 16-20 percent, which is also too high, Siluanov said.
“This is impossible [to take out loans] when interest rates are exorbitant,” he said. “No business can withstand this level of costs.”
Siluanov also said bank fees for money transfers as being beyond reasonable limits.
“The fee for money transfers in Russia is exorbitant. It is said that payment terminals charge high fees. But this is not the case: payment systems levy just 0.1-02 percent [of the size of remittances] while banks charge 2 percent and some lenders even more,” Siluanov said.
