Addressing more than 200 Russian and C. I. S. delegates gathered in Moscow for Finance-'92, an international symposium on commercial banking here, Taylor said that while the Russian banking system still needed time to evolve into a commercial venture, it has progressed quickly.
"Five years ago there were only live commercial banks in the Soviet Union", Taylor said. "Now there are 3, 000 in the C. I. S. , 2, 000 of which are in Russia".
He said it could be attributed to newly privatized state enterprises, which now account for 80 percent of all commercial banks.
Also addressing the conference, Helmut Schwap, director of the International Business Bank of Austria, said that because the Russian banking system was still in its infancy, many Russian bankers were afraid that foreign banks would be impossible to compete with.
But foreign banks serve only a select group of customers, he said.
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