Tuesday, 18 April 2017

Russian banks urged to accelerate concessional loans

Back in January, Russia’s Ministry of Agriculture and the state agricultural bank, Rosselkhozbank, signed an agreement on the implementation of preferential crediting for agricultural enterprises.

Today the First Deputy Minister of Agriculture urged banks and regions to accelerate work on concessional loans.

It appears that banks, which had been approved by the Ministry of Agriculture to participate in the scheme, are taking a long time to consider loan applications and are providing borrowers with an incomplete set of documents to obtain government support.

I'm no finance expert but it sounds to me like banks are, unsurprisingly, not too keen to participate in the Ministry plan lend money at 5% when previously they would have commanded 20-30%.