EKHO MOSKVY. Only the private sector could be a driving force of any country, noted Alfa-Bank CEO Peter Aven in an interview broadcast by Ekho Moskvy radio station.
“To put it plain, as for my viewpoints I’m quite a liberal economist and I do think that private property is generally more efficient than that owned by the government, therefore I am not an advocate of state-run corporations. And I believe that at certain periods of history statism, which, particular, has spread in Russia is inevitable given the crisis. But this should turn into a trend and in the long-term outlook, definitely, only the private sector, as I see, could become a driving force of efficient development of any country," he said.
Also the banker pointed out he closely monitors the actions the US authorities have been taking to get out of the crisis. “We’re certainly watching what’s going on in the United States. Of course, we closely monitored the measures of the American regulators. We’re watching the situation together with our national bank, with which, by the way, Alfa-Bank established a good dialog, as I see," he noted. It seems to him that banks established a very good dialog with financial authorities. Of course, we’re monitoring this, there are quite thorny issues like restrictions for bonus payments which dramatically disturb executives, as you can imagine, or issues relating to capital increases.
Aven said the actions taken by Russian finance authorities during the crisis were largely adequate: “they were fast, vigorous. I can even say they were unexpectedly vigorous and unexpectedly adequate, at least for me”. He added earlier he made quite a pessimistic forecast for the post-crisis condition of the Russian financial sector, but he is glad this forecast missed the mark. “It did not get off the ground, since financial authorities acted quite adequately. A huge amount of liquidity was provided, replacing the money that banks were unable to raise in the West. Some banks obtained, primarily state-run banks, serious capital support, which is also important. Therefore right now, at any rate, definitely there is no serious systemic crisis in the Russian banking system.
