A mysterious growth of capital outflow from Russia has puzzled Russian banks and experts
The volume of capital withdrawal from Russia abroad in the first quarter of 2017 puzzled the financial community. Regardless of the Central Bank’s forecasts about a yearly rate of $12 billion, the outflow for the first quarter alone has already amounted to $15.4 billion.
According to the Central Bank itself, the reason lies in the growth of banks’ foreign currency purchases, but the banks themselves deny this. "We did not increase foreign assets in the first quarter of 2017," VTB Bank reported to Izvestia.
No other large banks were seen to increase foreign assets. Experts also confirmed the absence of large currency purchases by crediting institutions.
"We can only talk about the top ten banks, as they could not have concealed this. No one can keep such transactions a secret," said BCS Chief Economist Vladimir Tikhomirov.
The financier noted that the Rosneft privatization deal could be the reason. 19.5% of the company's shares were bought by foreigners, the consortium of the Swiss Glencore and the Qatar Investment Authority fund.
The €10.5 billion transaction could have affected the results of the capital outflow report. However, Raiffeisenbank analyst Denis Poryvay disagrees. He noted that as a result of that transaction, the balances did not actually change, as though the money simply came and went.
Poryvay believes that the true reason for the growth in outflows was the payment of external debts worth about $14.7 billion. Moreover, the expert believes that the collapse of hopes for the cancellation of sanctions could have led to additional foreign investments.