The Russian government has broadly supported a bill designed to ban banks from unilaterally raising lending limits, including on credit cards. But lawmakers were asked to fine-tune some points taking into account comments from the Cabinet of Ministers.
Subscribe to RB.RU on Telegram
As follows from the official response of the Cabinet of Ministers to the draft law, the government supports the bill “subject to its review taking into account the specified comment.” TASS writes about this with reference to the document.
The bill, drafted by Senator Airat Gibatdinov, primarily concerns credit cards. It proposes to prohibit the inclusion in loan contracts of clauses that allow the bank to unilaterally increase the size of the loan.
The author of the initiative cites data from the Central Bank, according to which as of July 1, 2023, 23 million Russians had bank cards.
“At the same time, according to open source data, the proportion of citizens with five or more loans increased to 8.6% (4.7% in 2021), and citizens’ credit card debt increased by 20% from April to September 2023,” the agency quotes the MP as saying.
The explanatory note to the bill states that increasing the size of the loan pushes people into a debt hole. Credit organisations “actually impose additional credit services on citizens,” and this situation seems unacceptable to MPs.
Cabinet Observations
The government generally supports the initiative, but the Cabinet of Ministers is asking that the draft law provide for the possibility of introducing changes to loan agreements. That is, banks should be able to offer to adjust the agreement, rather than conclude a new one with a larger loan amount.
Author:
Natalia Gormaleva
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
