MOSCOW, December 04. /ITAR-TASS/. Arrears for Russia’s consumer loans total 435 billion rubles, Central Bank governor Elvira Nabiullina told a conference of the All-Russia People’s Front on Wednesday.
She emphasised importance of raising financial awareness of the population and of fighting “usurious interest rates.”
Any debtor should have an opportunity to solve debt problems in a civilized manner, Nabiullina said, stressing the need for adopting laws on bankruptcy of individuals.
Nabiullina said she considered it important to develop a civilized procedure of loan foreclosure, but legally this could be done only through submitting amendments to the laws on consumer crediting.
Meanwhile, the Central Bank of Russia expects that the growth rates of unsecured loans will decline by 35% in 2013.
This was not only the result of measures taken by the Central Bank, this meant that “the country’s banks also pursue a cautious policy,” Nabiullina said.
The Central Bank of Russia would introduce additional measures to protect citizens from obtrusive proposals for high-interest loans, the bank’s governor said.
Speaking of loans that had often been issued through credit cards, she said, “we need to block obtrusive issuance of such loans to consumers.