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In October, the rate of revocations of bank licenses remained rather high. A total of 9 credit institutions were deprived of the right to pursue their banking activities.

The norms of the agreement on association of Ukraine with the European Union started to be formally applied on Saturday, November 1. However, due to a tough position of Russia which protects its market the economic part of the association will be effective only fr om January 1, 2016.

On October 31, 2014, at the regular meeting of the Board of Directors of the Central Bank of Russia a decision was taken on substantial raising of the key interest rate to 9.5% annually (growth of 1.5 p.p.).

On the other day, Alexei Kudrin, Former Finance Minister of Russia recommended the Central Bank of Russia to switch-over to the floating exchange rate of the ruble this November, rather than in 2015. Such a proposal appears quite justified.

In September 2014, the level of unemployment (the ratio of the number of the unemployed to the number of the gainfully employed population) amounted to 4.9%. As compared to August 2014, in September 2014 the number of the gainfully employed population decreased by 425,000 persons or 0.6%, while the number of the unemployed rose by 57,000 persons or 1.6%. As compared to September 2013, the number of the gainfully employed population increased by 179,000 or 0.2%, while the number of the unemployed fell by 270,000 persons or 6.8%.

According to the data as of October 28, banks' debt to the Central Bank of Russia on REPO deals increased to Rb 2.9 trillion, while the debt on other loans amounted to Rb 2.9 trillion, too. It is to be noted that in a situation of the ruble depreciation the liquidity provided by the Central Bank of Russia immediately gets into the foreign exchange market and exerts further pressure on the ruble.

In 2014, the macroeconomic situation is characterized by gradual slowdown of development. In September 2014, under the effect of growth in credit resources, limitation of companies' access to borrowing of funds on global financial markets and prevalence of high geopolitical risks a year-on-year drop of 2.8% in investments was observed.

The draft federal budget for 2015 and the 2016-2017 planned period submitted by the Government provides for utilization of funds received from privatization of federal property as an individual source of financing of the deficit of the federal budget.

There is much for advanced readers to read about the state's domestic and foreign policy priorities in the Draft budget for 2015-2017 submitted to the State Duma and already approved by the budget committee.

Mortgage residential lending kept growing in the period of January to August 2014. As of September 1, 2014, 619026 residential mortgage loans (RMLs) at Rb 1,07 trillion were issued, a gain of 27.47% quantitatively and 36.33% in value vs. the volume of lending observed during the corresponding period of 2013.

On October 24, the Standard & Poor's Rating Agency is going to revise Russia's sovereign rating.

The Central Bank of Russia has returned to the practice of currency interventions in a situation of a sudden depreciation of the ruble. Fr om the beginning of October, the bi-currency basket is traded close to the upper limit of the floating operating interval.

On Thursday, October 16, 2014, the Central Bank of Russia withdrew the licenses of three credit institutions. That regular measure taken by the regulator is worth mentioning because the number of credit institutions which were deprived their licenses to carry out operations from the date Elvira Nabiulina took the office of the Chairman of the Central Bank of Russia – that is, from July 2013 till the present day -- has amounted to 100.

The Russian national currency, like the currencies of major developing countries, keeps devaluing steadily. The ruble exchange rate has been pressured by both geopolitical risks and further cuts on monetary easing programs in the U.S. economy, and fall in prices of energy resources.

In conditions of limitation of access of Russian companies to Western debt markets, the banking sector has become completely dependent on the Central Bank of Russia.

In 2015, export duties on oil used for production of oil products for export to Europe will not be transferred to the Russian budget; as a result of that Belarus will save about $1.5bn in addition to those $1.5bn which was decided to leave to Belarus under the previous agreements.