OREANDA-NEWS. November 17, 2008. Leaders of the Russian banking sector together with OJSC Russian Railways have developed a package of proposals to support sustainable financing of the Russian real economy and to promote infrastructure projects which are aimed at safeguarding domestic enterprises’ stable growth, reported the press-centre of VTB Bank.

Due to a strategic role of the transport industry in ensuring Russia’s social and economic growth, the railway infrastructure has become of utmost importance amid the current global financial market. The joint initiative of the banking community and OJSC Russian Railways provides for an appeal to the Council for Development of Financial Markets recently created by the Russian President, and to the Bank of Russia to streamline the terms for commercial banks to refinance their loans with the Bank of Russia.

Business leaders strongly believe that under current environment banks should receive additional liquidity to support socially and economically important infrastructure projects. Such liquidity might be different both in its targets – project, investment or working capital; and in terms – short-term financing (under one year) and long-term financing (up to five years).

More importantly, the business community suggests that the Bank of Russia should unify its requirements to the documents submitted by banks to get financing; and to reduce the application response period to 10 days. Besides, a discount rate of not more than 20% should be applied to the assets accepted by the Bank of Russia as a collateral under such infrastructure projects.

On their part, the banks participating in the deal are ready to possibly reduce the minimum margin added to the loan interest rate of the Bank of Russia, in order to reduce the debt burden of OJSC Russian Railways.

Once implemented, these measures could materialize into a real financial support to long-term infrastructure projects of OJSC Russian Railways, and as a result, could preserve the demand for domestic produce through an efficient order placement system.

Citing Valery Lukyanenko, Member of VTB Bank Management Board, “Support to the real economy lies in the core of VTB strategy. I am absolutely sure that these measures agreed by all the parties will allow us to successfully implement 2020 Plan and Russia’s Transport Strategy till 2030. This will considerably strengthen our country’s positions in the dynamically changing global economic environment”.

Alongside VTB, other banks are also ready to participate in implementing these measures, namely: Sberbank, Gazprombank, the Bank of Moscow, TransCreditBank, Uralsib, Vozrozhdenie and the Moscow Industrial Bank.