DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Russian companies have made bids for about $90 billion in help from state corporation VEB to restructure foreign debts, VEB chairman Vladimir Dmitriev told reporters on Thursday.
"We received a total of $90 billion in bids," Dmitriev told reporters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
VEB is entrusted with distributing $50 billion of state money to help Russian companies refinance their foreign debts. About $11 billion of that has been distributed.
But the size of the bids gives an indication of the seriousness of the economic crisis facing Russia, whose economy is forecast by the government to contract in 2009 for the first time in more than a decade.
Russian corporates have to pay back $115.7 billion in foreign debt and interest next year, according to Russian government estimates.
VEB which helps decide which businesses survive and which fail has become one of the most powerful entities in Russia. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin heads VEB's supervisory board and the corporation is state owned. (Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, editing by Mike Peacock)