ROME, February 24 (Itar-Tass) — The European financial crisis will open additional opportunities for the Russian economy in the far future along with current problems, President of the Association of Russian Banks Garegin Tosunyan told Itar-Tass on Thursday. He chaired the Russian-Italian banking forum in the Italian capital on Thursday.
“The European crisis has a quite negative impact on the Russian banking system, because we took loans from Europe as a source for refinancing of our economy for a long time. Now this source is on the decline substantially, even it can be said to halt. But, on the other side, this makes us more vigilant and the level of critical attitude to the possibility of foreign financing higher,” Tosunyan noted.
Meanwhile, he believes that the economic crisis in Europe, which has a negative impact now, will open up new opportunities for Russia in the long run in case of a well-developed policy. “Russia remains an economy with the lack of credits, the production stays at the stage of insufficient production in the banking sector and other sectors of economy. While the crisis, which the United States and Europe are experiencing, is a crisis of overproduction in all spheres as well, particularly the oversaturation in the financial sector. In the future this will redirect the vector of investments to such more investment-intensive countries with a major potential like Russia,” he said.
The Thursday forum was devoted to a review of the situation on the world financial markets and foreign economic relations between Russia and Italy during the economic crisis. The forum was organized by the National Banking Club under the support and with the participation of the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Economic Development, the Association of Russian Banks, the Russian Trade Mission in Italy and the UBI Banca Group, which brings together several Italian banks.
“As far as industrial cooperation between Russia and Italy is concerned the current economic slump does not entail serious consequences,” UBI Banca top official Luca Monti told Itar-Tass. “Russian economy keeps growing rapidly that makes it possible to maintain import-export relations at the high level,” he said. However, as for inter-banking relations in terms of crediting of the companies Italian banks are facing a tough competition outside Italy from other European banks in the countries, where economic problems are not so sweeping,” Monti said. “German and French banks are well represented in Russia, as the prices of their services are more beneficial than those of Italian financial institutions,” Monti said.
The traditional international forum of bankers and businesspeople is held already for 12th time. Previous forums with representatives of the banking community were held in various capitals of the world, namely London, Helsinki, Amsterdam, Paris, Tokyo, Abu Dhabi, Vienna, Stockholm and other cities.