OREANDA-NEWS. January 18, 200. The Bank of Moscow has proceeded to the implementation of the mortgage lending programme in Japanese Yen. The minimum interest rate for such loans will be 6% per annum. "This is an unprecedented product for the Russian market of housing credit, — says the Managing Director of the Retail Business block of the Bank of Moscow Alla Tsytovich. — Just for comparison: the average market rate for housing credits in foreign currency today is about 10,5—11,5% per annum".

It should be especially noted that credits in Japanese Yen are only available until April 15 2008. "We decided to launch this programme for a trial period, — says Alla Tsytovich. — And if the experiment proves to be successful, we will continue with the practice of granting loans in Japanese Yen".

This is not the first mortgage lending scheme of the Bank of Moscow involving exotic currency. In April 2007 the Bank of Moscow launched a mortgage lending scheme in the Swiss currency. The low interest rate helped the scheme to quickly become popular. In only 7 months (from May till November 2007) the housing mortgage pool in the Swiss currency exceeded 4 billion rubles despite the fact that these results were initially planned to be achieved only at the end of the last year. "This credit scheme to a great extent helped the cumulative housing mortgage pool to increase by 134% over the year 2007, — says the Vice-President of the Bank of Moscow Irina Nikitenko. — Nevertheless, we have decided not to content ourselves with our present achievements and continue to offer our clients increasingly more favourable terms of crediting".

"The reduction in the interest rate will result in mortgage credits becoming still more affordable, — says Alla Tsytovich. — One example is: today the average rate for rouble loans is 12% per annum. This means that a family with an income of 45,000 rubles a month, and upon the condition of an initial payment of 10% and a crediting period of 10 years, may obtain all in all about 2,2 mln rubles. If we reduce the interest rate to 6%, the maximum credit amount will be about 2,83 mln in rubles. Accordingly, the maximum cost of housing will be about 2,4 mln rubles in the first case, and about 3,2 mln rubles in the second case".

The Bank of Moscow can by right be considered a pioneer in the field of mortgage credit lending who is to a considerable extent responsible for determining the trends in the residential mortgage market. "We consider mortgage crediting as one of the priority lines of retail business for our Bank, — says Irina Nikitenko. — Moreover, it should also be noted that, according to the 2007 results, the mortgage segment has been growing faster than the retail portfolio in general — at the rate of 134% against 108%".