Deripaska offered to “gather courage” and reduce the key rate to 5%

Businessman Oleg Deripaska said that Russia would not be able to overcome the economic crisis with state investments alone. For the transition to growth, according to the businessman, you need to show courage. In particular, he proposed to reduce the key rate to 5% and carry out a quantitative easing program to secure mortgages and investments worth 20–25 trillion rubles.

“Until we muster up the courage (and, in principle, we have nothing to lose for a long time), we will not reduce the rate to 5%, we will not carry out a quantitative easing program to secure mortgages and investments for 20–25 trillion rubles — we will not be able to launch economic growth,” wrote Oleg Deripaska in his Telegram channel.

In his opinion, businessmen and the population will not take “expensive loans for anything.” Mr. Deripaska added that foreign investors “even from the most friendly countries” cannot be attracted to Russia because of the high exchange rate of the ruble, “which makes any production, including agricultural products, uncompetitive.”

“And all ideas with state investments on import substitution, on creating alternative export and import channels, developing logistics and processing – everything will go to waste. There will be no economic recovery in a country with such a high cost of debt (let’s not forget about the serious burden on business and the economy in the form of outdated judicial and law enforcement systems),” he concluded.

Today, October 28, a scheduled meeting of the Board of Directors of the Central Bank will be held. The regulator is expected to keep the key rate at 7.5%. In September, the head of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina warnedthat the regulator will soon end the cycle of lowering key rates. She also allowed for a rate hike.

Olesya Pavlenko