Russia Plans to Sell VTB, Sberbank, Rosselkhoz Stakes to Plug Budget Gap

The Russian government seeks to sell shares in Russia’s biggest lenders, including a 10 percent stake in VTB Group by year-end, Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Savatyugin said.

The government may sell the 10 percent stake to a strategic foreign investor this year and an additional 25 percent over the next three years, Savatyugin told reporters in Sochi today. The Finance Ministry has proposed that the central bank sell some of its shares in OAO Sberbank, Russia’s largest lender, he said.

The ministry also seeks by 2013 to sell a stake in state- owned Russian Agricultural Bank, known as Rosselkhozbank, Savatyugin said. Russia may sell up to 49 percent of shares in the bank, in which the state owns 100 percent.

Russia plans to sell stakes in some of the country’s largest state-controlled companies and banks, Economy Minister Elvira Nabiullina said on July 29. The government may raise as much as 700 billion rubles ($23.5 billion) in three years from the sales to help plug a budget deficit, her ministry said.

Bank lending is set to increase 10 percent this year as the economy recovers from last year’s record 7.9 percent contraction, Bank Rossii First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev said in Sochi today. Gross domestic product may expand about 5 percent this year, he said.

Lending continued to increase in July as overdue loans slid from a June 1 peak, according to Mikhail Sukhov, a central bank board member. Corporate lending rose 0.3 percent, while retail lending climbed 1.6 percent in the month, he said last week.

“The crisis of short-term liquidity is over,” Garegin Tosunyan, president of the Russian Association of Banks, said on Aug. 26 at a banking conference in Nizhny Novgorod.

To contact the reporters on this story: Anton Doroshev in Sochi via the Moscow newsroom at adoroshev@bloomberg.net; Maria Levitov in Moscow at mlevitov@bloomberg.net

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