Hard to call Russian banking system healthy – Sberbank exec

MOSCOW. Oct 28 (Interfax) – It is currently difficult to call the Russian banking system healthy, Sberbank (MOEX: SBER) deputy CEO Bella Zlatkis believes.

“If two or three banking institutions in the country close per week, if this number increases by tens in a year, if a whole number of banking institutions are having problems with capital and liquidity, I suppose that it’s difficult to call the banking system healthy,” Zlatkis said at a press conference at Interfax’s head office on Wednesday.

Zlatkis was responding to the comments of the head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), Alexander Shokhin, who recalled the opinion of VTB head Andrei Kostin that there is no crisis in Russia.

“The banking system is having very great difficulties related to both [the depreciation of the ruble] and sanctions,” Zlatkis added.

VTB (MOEX: VTBR) head Andrei Kostin said earlier that he believed there was no crisis in Russia. “It seems to me that those who believe that there is a crisis in Russia today are either too young to remember 1998 or 2008, or they just have a short memory. Because we do not currently feel like we are in a crisis by any circumstances, although the situation, including in the financial sector, is not easy,” Kostin said at the Russia Calling! forum earlier this month.