Page 74 - RusRPTJul20

lawmakers.
The Russian banking sector entered the crisis in arguably its healthiest ever condition, and analysts still expect banks to book profits this year, despite huge writedowns on loan portfolios, a fall in interest rates and a slowdown in payments activity.
The coronavirus pandemic and the collapse of the economy have nullified the profits of the Russian banking system, which fell 64-fold year-on-year over the first five months of this year​, according to the Central Bank of Russia (CBR). According to the results of May, cumulative profits were only RUB500mn, CBR governor Elvira Nabiullina said. “According to the results of five months, banks showed net profit of RUB561bn ($20.9bn),” she said, adding that most of this amount was received in the first three months of the year, “when the impact of the pandemic was still limited.” “Then we began to record a drop in profits,” Nabiullina stated. In April, compared with March, cumulative profits fell 6-fold to RUB32bn, and in May - another 64 times.
74​ RUSSIA Country Report​ July 2020 ​ ​www.intellinews.com