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Weekly Lists
April 7, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 23
bne:Banker
Reforms needed to revive Tajikistan's banking and financial sectors, ADB says
Tajik economic growth is forecast to decline to 4.8% in 2017, down from 6.9% in 2016, according to ADB’s Asian Development Outlook 2017 (ADO 2017), published on April 6.
The forecast will be supported by high loan losses, which limit bank lending, and weak remittances from migrant workers, which curb consumption. Growth will pick up to 5.5% in 2018. Higher growth in 2016 was possible thanks to higher public investment.
“To support private sector development and sustained growth, Tajikistan needs urgent reforms to revive its banking and financial sectors,” ADB’s acting country director for Tajikistan B. Chansavat said. “Short-run measures may include obtaining a sovereign country rating to promote foreign inflows, strengthening bank supervision, preventing cronyism in lending, and enhancing the affordability and accessibility of financial services.”
Rising liquidity costs caused by the implicit rate hikes of the Turkish central bank pushed the average cost of 3-month deposits for Turkey's banks to 11.30% while the average mortgage rate declined to 11.11%, Bloomberg reported on April 5.
Flying in the face of economic orthodoxy, Erdogan - who is into the last two weeks of campaigning for the April 16 referendum that critics say could turn him into a strongman president - is continuing to insist that lowering interest rates would result in lower inflation, as well as stronger economic growth. A more logical explanation for Erdogan’s intense fight against interest rates could be the Turkish economy’s dependence on the construction industry and as a result on housing demand.
Russia’s largest lender state-controlled Sberbank will gain in profitability in the coming 12 to 18 months due to its recovering operating environment and expected pick up in new lending, Moody’s Investors Service argued in a report published on April 6.
"Sberbank has outperformed its sector peers in recent years and we expect the gap to be sustained over the next 12 to 18 months as the bank leverages its superior revenue generation, declining credit costs, and cost advantage," Moody's Vice President Olga Ulyanova believes.
"We expect Sberbank's net interest margin to remain more than 100 basis points higher than the sector average in 2017 and 2018," she adds.
Erdogan pressure drives Turkish banks to cut mortgage rates to below deposit rates
Moody’s expects Russia’s Sberbank to improve profitability further