“The pace of growth of lending is not yet good enough,” he said. “Our next task is to increase this pace.”

Bankers insist they have been responding. But pressure is mounting as Russia faces its worst economic slump in 10 years. Domestic credit markets are still all but dried up amid a dearth of rouble liquidity, in spite of the Rbs960bn in subordinated loans the government has already supplied to the same state banks last year and up to Rbs3,500bn in collateral-free loans to a select group of banks.

The government is also looking to the banks to use the vast sums of hard currency they and their clients have stashed away while the government conducted a managed rouble depreciation over the past few months to help refinance the $140bn in foreign debts Russian companies must repay this year.