ST. PETERSBURG, July 3 The head of Sberbank, German Gref, described the Central Bank of the Russian Federation's forecast for banking sector profits in 2024 as optimistic, higher than last year's result.
«»I am not ready to make predictions either about the profit of Sberbank or the profit of the banking system. Many banks say that their profitability this year will be lower than last year, so I am not like that a big optimist in terms of exceeding last year’s results,” Gref told reporters on the sidelines of the Financial Congress, answering a question about the achievability of the Central Bank’s forecast for the profits of the banking sector in the Russian Federation in 2024.
In June, the regulator raised the forecast for net profit of the Russian banking sector in 2024 to 3.1-3.6 trillion rubles from the March estimate of 2.3-2.8 trillion rubles. The increase in the forecast, as the regulator explained in materials then, was made taking into account business growth, slightly decreased margins and historically low contributions to reserves.
Russian banks earned a record net profit of 3.4 trillion rubles in 2023.