Russia's VEB says some firms may struggle to repay

MOSCOW, April 15 (Reuters) - Some Russian companies will struggle to pay back government cash borrowed from state bank VEB, leaving the door open for their possible nationalisation, the bank's head was quoted as saying on Wednesday.

As part of Russia's anti-crisis package, VEB has lent around $11 billion to companies struggling to refinance foreign debt.

"For now all (are meeting the payments). But ... we can see that a number of companies can face this problem," Vladimir Dmitriev told the Kommersant business daily in an interview.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said earlier this month that VEB will take shares in companies used as collateral if they fail to repay the loans on time.

"In this case the state bank is acting as an agent of the government. I do not want to talk about specific companies but I take (Putin's) words quite seriously, especially as he also heads VEB's supervisory board," Dmitriev said.

Recipients of VEB funds include steel maker Evraz HK1q.L, Russia's largest developer PIK (PKGPq.L) and United Company RUSAL [ID:nLP517460]. The latter was reported to have asked VEB for more time to pay its $4.5 billion loan [ID:nLD644317].

"The state and the supervisory board must make decisions on the fate of this loan," said Dmitriev, adding that under current legislation the loan could be extended but not restructured.

But Russia's largest oil company, state-owned Rosneft (ROSN.MM) paid back its $577 million credit more than six months ahead of schedule [ID:nLA564480], and VEB expects that a total of $2 billion will be paid back by its debtors by the end of this month.

VEB was also charged with using state funds to buy domestic stocks and corporate bonds, spending 168 billion roubles ($5.02 billion) to this end last year out of an allocated 175 billion.

"At the end of last year we stopped working with shares. But we think we could continue work with bonds," he said, adding that the list of acceptable investments included state firms such as Gazprom (GAZP.MM), Sberbank (SBER03.MM) and VTB (VTBR.MM) as well as some privately owned companies.

(Reporting by Toni Vorobyova; editing by John Stonestreet)