OREANDA-NEWS. During the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum Sberbank and Federal Corporation for Development of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME Corporation) made a Strategic Cooperation Agreement. The Agreement was signed by Herman Gref, the Sberbank CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, and Aleksandr Braverman, the General Director of SME Corporation.

The primary objective of this Agreement is organizing a comprehensive cooperation between the bank and SME Corporation on the issues concerning the development of small and medium businesses and the coordination of the government support of entrepreneurs within SME Corporation's guarantee products and special programs, and Sberbank's credit products.

The cooperation aims at improving supporting measures for small and medium businesses, increasing the availability of guarantee and credit support for small and medium businesses, developing National Guarantee System and implementing special government support programs for enterprises.

Sberbank was one of the first to fund small and medium enterprises under SME Corporation program in cooperation with the Bank of Russia. Sberbank provided over 3,800 loans amounting to a total sum of 25,900,000,000 rubles to small and medium businesses against the guarantee by SME Corporation. Sberbank's share in the total guarantee portfolio of the Corporation is approximately 50%.

The total guarantees given by SME Corporation amount to 27,200,000,000 rubles. The number of guarantees and bonds given as of June 14, 2016, is 4,892. The total amount of the guarantee support is 30,274,000 rubles, and the total amount of credit funds raised is 58,533,000 rubles.

Sberbank is Russia’s largest bank and a leading global financial institution. Sberbank holds almost one third of aggregate Russian banking sector assets, it is the key lender to the national economy and the biggest deposit taker in Russia. The Central Bank of the Russian Federation is the founder and principal shareholder of Sberbank owning 50% of the Bank's authorized capital plus one voting share, with the remaining 50% held by domestic and international investors. Sberbank has more than 135 million individual customers and more than 1 million corporate clients in 22 countries. Sberbank has the largest distribution network in Russia with almost 17,000 branches, and its international operations include UK, US, CIS, Central and Eastern Europe, Turkey and other countries.

SME Corporation is a development institution in the sphere of small and medium enterprises, founded in order to coordinate the support of SME entities, as provided by the Federal Law No. 209-FZ of July 24, 2007, "On the development of small and medium enterprises in the Russian Federation". The core objectives of the SME Corporations are: supporting SME entities and organizations forming SME supporting infrastructure; organizing information, marketing, financial and legal support of SME's projects; taking proper measures to increase the share of purchasing products, works, services by government-supported customers from SME entities in the annual volume of purchases of products, works and services, and in the annual volume of purchases of innovative and advances technology products, etc.