Measuring the Debt Service Ratio in Russia: A Micro-Level Data Approach

Abstract

A new micro-level database was used to estimate the debt service ratio (DSR) for the private non-banking sector in Russia. This is the first paper presenting a loan-based DSR estimate for Russia. The micro-level database contains information on the actual remaining maturities and lending rates for each loan granted by domestic banks to the private non-banking sector in Russia in the 2017Q1–2020Q4 period. The DSR levels estimated are considerably higher than previous results obtained with assumptions of a constant maturity structure and average lending rates. The new results reveal that the aggregate assumptions are not sufficiently granular. The use of actual remaining maturity at each estimation point improves the accuracy of DSR estimates by ten percentage points on average. The loan- level database provides new insight into the composition of the corporate debt servicing burden in Russia: the prevalence of domestic currency loans, the higher debt servicing cost for debt with shorter remaining maturity, and the sectoral heterogeneity of DSRs.