OREANDA-NEWS. According to the press-service of the EBRD, Rostov-based Center-Invest Bank gets two loans totalling 1.26 billion roubles from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Russia’s Center-Invest Bank will provide then long-term local currency funding for energy efficiency projects, mortgages, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and micro-businesses in the South of the country.

As part of its efforts to help cut the high levels of energy wastage in Russia, the EBRD is promoting energy efficiency loans with the goal of getting this new type of lending solidly established in the domestic banking sector, said Kurt Geiger, EBRD Business Group Director, Financial Institutions, at a loan signing ceremony held in the city of Sochi.

The first loan of 1 billion roubles, to be used for energy efficiency, mortgages and SMEs, will be 50 percent co-financed by the Netherlands’ Development Finance Company (FMO).

Half of the loan, earmarked for mortgage lending, has a seven-year maturity while the other half, which covers both the financing of local small and medium-sized businesses and energy efficiency projects, has a five-year tenor. The energy efficiency loans will be mainly targeted at SMEs.

In addition, a second loan of 260 million roubles is being extended to Center-Invest Bank for five years under the EBRD’s Russia’s Small Business Fund (RSBF) programme for financing of micro and small enterprises.

RSBF funding has enabled Russian partner banks to make nearly 400,000 small, micro and medium-sized loans for a cumulative total of $4.3 billion since the EBRD launched this programme with the financial backing of the G-7 and Switzerland in 1994.

The EBRD relationship with the Center-Invest Bank began in 2002, and it has to date provided it with over $125 million through various credit lines, a syndicated loan and a $28.7 million capital investment. The EBRD has a 27.45 percent stake in the Center-Invest Bank.