President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Please tell me about your Bank’s performance, its loan portfolio and main projects, primarily those supporting the agricultural sector.
I know that you wanted to tell me about support for small rural businesses. Please go ahead.
Rosselkhozbank Management Board Chairman Dmitry Patrushev: Thank you, Mr. President.
With your permission, I will make two presentations. The first one deals with the main bank performance indicators, and the second one shows projects that were launched in 2017 and those scheduled to be launched.
First, let me thank you for supportingRosselkhozbank, its additional capitalisation allows us to provide the economy with the same loan volumes. This concerns the agro-industrial complex, our main partner, in the first place.
I would like to report on our results achieved since the start of 2017. We continue to invest in the real economy. We are outpacing the market in terms of loan issue rates. Rosselkhozbank’s loan portfolio already exceeds 1.9 trillion roubles.
We control over 30 percent of the entire Russian market in terms of loans to the agro-industrial complex, and Rosselkhozbank’s loan portfolio for this complex is already approaching the 1.2 trillion rouble mark.
We are still the main bank lending assets for seasonal fieldwork. In principle, these loans guarantee the good bumper harvests posted in the Russian Federation.
Naturally, I would like to note that the farmers’ substantial loan demand could be explained by extremely high current state-support levels.
I would like to note that the soft loans mechanism, implemented as per your instructions, is functioning very smoothly. Under the new mechanism, agricultural produce manufacturers receive loans carrying not more than 5 percent annual interest.
In our opinion, this mechanism greatly reduces outlays for agro-businesses. We are actively involved in issuing loans under this mechanism.
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