Smart Money

The situation with available funds is now fundamentally different, noted Yaroslav Lissovolik, Chief Economist at Deutsche Bank in Russia. Banks have more available funds due to the increase in budget expenditures, which has been felt since December, and the capital inflow that recovered in the fourth quarter. It continues in the current year, which is noticeable by the slight strengthening of the ruble against the bi-currency basket (0.2%), explains Lissovolik. "In the fourth quarter, budget expenditures, according to the Finance Ministry, amounted to about 2 trillion rubles, which was a record. The traditional end-of-year effect was added to the pre-election increase in budget expenditures. Increased budget expenditures will be observed until the March elections, so a shortage of money on the market is not expected during this period," Lissovolik summarizes. According to Natalia Orlova, Chief Economist at Alfa Bank , banks currently hold 1.2 trillion rubles in deposits and correspondent accounts with the Central Bank. – one and a half times more than when reserve requirements were relaxed last year.

Starting today, the Central Bank is increasing the mandatory reserve requirements for banks. They will have to pay 4% instead of 3% of the volume of deposits attracted and 4.5% instead of 3.5% for other obligations. The Central Bank's requirements will be the same as they were three months ago. The regulator has made a temporary relaxation to help its wards cope with the resource deficit that arose due to instability in the global financial market. According to the estimate of the First Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank Alexey Ulyukayev, this measure alone allowed banks to receive about 70 billion rubles.

It was not possible to obtain comments from Ulyukayev and other representatives of the Central Bank on this topic yesterday. However, many experts are sure that the situation is still far from normalizing. The world's largest banks continue to report billion-dollar write-offs. And the National Bank of the Republic of Kazakhstan, for example, postponed the introduction of new reserve requirements from January 1 to June 1 (reserve standards for internal liabilities should decrease from 6% to 5%, and for external liabilities – increase from 8% to 10%).

Banks have two days to recalculate reserves, and the Central Bank has the same period to check the accuracy of these calculations, says Chief Accountant of Orgresbank Tatyana Sharova. Most will have to create additional reserves, because this is required even if the bank's obligations remain unchanged, Sharova clarifies. The return of reserves will be approximately equal to the amount that banks took after the reduction of standards, since there was no particular growth in the deposit base, notes Chief Accountant of the International Industrial Bank Sergey Lipanov.

The need to accrue additional reserves in the current situation will not be fatal for banks, but will still be sensitive, since the liquidity crisis is not over yet, warns Lipanov. Yesterday, during the repo auction, banks attracted 2.7 billion rubles from the Central Bank - two orders of magnitude less than the record values of this indicator at the height of the liquidity deficit.

Payback of 70 billion rubles.