Moscow (AFP)

In recent months, small machines have appeared in the shopping centers of St. Petersburg. Simply insert your passport to immediately obtain a microcredit, at a prohibitive rate of 365% annual, a symptom of a debt fever that worries the authorities.

The Russian population, with purchasing power still very low and declining for several years, is contracting more and more credits for its purchases or just to make ends meet.

The spectacular growth of credit for 18 months reaches such a level that the Minister of Economy said he feared the explosion of a bubble likely to cause a recession.

But the subject is very sensitive: limiting the granting of credit means depriving households of a source of income that is sometimes vital and risk slowing down already sluggish growth.

"The situation could become explosive in 2021," Minister Maxime Orechkine warned in late July on the radio Echo Moskvy, saying measures were being prepared to help the strangled population by the debts.

According to him, household debt in consumer credit has increased by 25% last year and now represents 1.800 billion rubles, or nearly 25 billion euros at the current rate.

For a third of indebted households, he said, the repayment of credit devours more than 60% of monthly income, pushing many to contract new credits to repay the old.

"The level of non-real estate loans in Russia currently stands at 9% of GDP, compared to 10-15% in Eastern Europe, but in Russia this is more worrying because real incomes not increased for three years, "Natalia Orlova, chief economist at Alfa Bank, told AFP.

According to her, the worry comes from the solvency of indebted households: "the debt is not distributed in a uniform way, it is contracted by low-income households, which are less likely to repay it." High and middle income households , the + good borrowers +, avoid getting into debt ".

- "People do not have money" -

The situation provoked frictions publicly expressed with the central bank, the government accusing it between the lines to let go.

According to Natalia Orlova, the growth of these loans is "the main factor supporting growth": "Tightening credit conditions could immediately impede growth."

However, economic activity has already experienced a sudden slowdown at the beginning of the year after the recoveries of 2017 and 2018, with an increase in gross domestic product of only 0.7% over one year in the first half.

A result well below the growth target set by Vladimir Putin, around 4% per year, hard to reach while the country has been hit since 2014 by unprecedented European and American economic sanctions, particularly because of the Ukrainian crisis.

With 19 million people living below the poverty line, Russia is in dire need of development.

"The problem is that people do not have money, so they take credit, that's why we feel physically the trepidation of the financial and economic authorities," summed up political scientist Andrey Kolesnikov, from the Carnegie Center in a recent article.

It describes an economy at the end of the race, with no other recourse than to "take extra money from the population and spend it for goals designated by the state, such as national projects".

VAT was increased at the beginning of the year, a very unpopular measure but presented as necessary while Vladimir Putin announced at the start of his mandate last year of ambitious "national projects".

Available in twelve categories including health and infrastructure, their cost is approaching $ 400 billion by 2024, of which $ 115 billion must come from private investment, Russian or foreign.

"What if the bubble burst suddenly? How will people react? They will remain without money while the authorities plan for example to build an extremely expensive highway, whose exploitation will inevitably be unprofitable," says Kolesnikov.

The expert quotes grandiose, patriotic projects recently announced by authorities of languid popularity: a bridge connecting the island of Sakhalin to the mainland in the Russian Far East or the creation of a "Russian Vatican" in Sergiev Posad, Mecca of orthodox spirituality north of Moscow.

"It has a diabolical cost," he notes.

© 2019 AFP