MOSCOW - A growing chorus of Russian industrial companies and lobby groups are complaining of prohibitively high interest rates and warning that goals for infrastructure development may be missed, with the central bank bearing the brunt of the criticism.
"The need to raise rates to limit inflation is clear, but we are starting to go too far," Mordashov said."We are coming to a situation where the medicine may become more dangerous than the disease." "It renders loans for companies' further development practically meaningless," he said at an October meeting between defence companies and machine builders.
Unusually hot weather and an accident at the Rostov nuclear power plant caused mass power outages and blackouts in several southern regions this summer, eliciting rare public protests in the city of Krasnodar.