State Companies Ordered To Use State Banks.

The cabinet yesterday ordered state-owned companies to transfer their accounts from commercial banks to one of the two state banks, Oshchadbank andUkreximbank, within six months. Alexander Viktorov: The loss of state-sector funds won’t cause serious problems for the banking system: the estimated share of state funds in banks’ liabilities is 7-9%. However, there could be problems for particular banks that heavily depend on state companies. For example, Aval was not troubled much by the loss of the state customs service’s accounts (which were ~4% of the bank’s liabilities), but the state railway’s departure from Express Bank was a serious blow.