Sberbank, Russia's largest savings bank, is fighting moves by the Central Bank and Finance Ministry to increase government control over the bank's resources, a Sberbank spokeswoman said Thursday.


The government proposals, detailed in a Nov. 2 report of the Russian Security Council, would direct all individuals' savings into a special state-controlled fund.


The government would also fix and review interest rates on savings and loans.


According to the Central Bank, which has a 51 percent stake in Sberbank, the former state savings institution, the measures are designed to protect people's savings in a chaotic market.


"Sberbank is the only bank whose savings the Russian state guarantees," Central Bank spokeswoman Natalya Khomenko said.


Sberbank spokeswoman Olga Pavlova, however, said that the government simply wants to use Sberbank's profits for its own ends.


Gennady Soldatenkov, vice president of Sberbank, told reporters Wednesday that the government wants to use the bank's resources to cover the budget deficit and, by centralizing funds, to block the power of the bank's regional branches.


Regional branches of Sberbank presently have a certain autonomy, investing their own funds as they see fit, he said.


"This is a return to the old command economy system," he said, according to Pavlova.


The argument is one of commercial investment versus public funding.


The government, according to Soldatenkov, cannot pay the high interest rates that commercial banks demand because its projects are not commercially viable.


He said that the government owes the Moscow branch of Sberbank alone 950 billion rubles ($298 million) that it has spent on housing projects and other budgetary needs.


Soldatenkov warned that the proposals would cause a repeat of 1992 with the government unable to repay depositors.


In early 1992, Sberbank froze depositors' accounts in a move to prevent money supply growth and more inflation.


Prices rose about 2,600 percent in 1992, while depositors only received interest of about 30 percent per year for most of the period. A compensation deal was worked out this year, but the payback remains a pittance.


Sberbank became an open joint-stock company in 1991 and has been the scene of power struggles since the Central Bank bought a majority stake in 1993.


As Russia's largest commercial bank, with over 30,000 branches nationwide and an estimated 50 percent of the population as its clients, Sberbank remains a major player in the market and has been modernizing to weather competition.


The bank signed a $127 million deal with the U.S. information technology company Unisys for a central clearing system in March and a $23 million deal in July with Hewlett Packard to computerize all its branches.