MOSCOW, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Russia's top lender Sberbank
Sberbank chief German Gref told Prime Minister Vladimir Putin the lender would resume giving out retail credits in foreign currencies, suspended last autumn, when a depreciation of the rouble made such debts hard to repay for ordinary Russians.
"Indeed we have made such a decision (to increase the retail lending in foreign currencies) ... Now we see the situation has stabilised, the risks of devaluation have decreased significantly," Gref said in comments posted on the government's web site.
The comments come after rumours of a second wave of rouble devaluation were reignited earlier this month when banking lobbyist Anatoly Aksakov called for a 30-40 percent fall in the value of the domestic currency.
Aksakov, who incurred the wrath of top officials in the ruling United Russia party, backtracked on Tuesday, saying the rouble should strengthen in the medium term [ID:nLP218842].
Sberbank, which holds roughly 25 percent of the Russian banking system's total assets, is struggling with losses as bad loans rise amid a recession, while the government pushes state banks to increase loan portfolios to the real economy.
"The trend we see now is a big volume of loan redemptions," Gref said. "On the one hand, non-payments are still continuing. But there are redemptions from big companies. Western markets have opened up. It is a good opportunity -- our companies have received access to 'cheap money' on Western markets."
Sberbank has also been lowering the cost of its loans, following a series of official interest rate cuts from the central bank. Gref said rouble loan rates have been cut by 3.75 percentage points in the past two months.
Analysts expect further rate cuts from the central bank, taking the benchmark refinancing rate to 10.00 percent by year-end from 10.75 percent currently. (Reporting by Dmitry Sergeyev, Writing by Toni Vorobyova, editing by Mike Peacock)