OREANDA-NEWS. March 31, 2011. The city of Stavropol is to host the region-focused Business Success conference at which Uniastrum will be presenting an award for “Best Innovative Project”, reported the press-centre of Uniastrum.

The conference will focus primarily on financing problems faced by small and midsized business and ways to overcome them. Svetlana Chubakova, Uniastrum Bank’s Vice President for Small Business Development, will be talking about the latest market trends in small enterprise lending and answering questions from business owners during an open discussion session.

Co-arranged by the All-Russian Non-Governmental Organization of Medium and Small Business (OPORA Russia), media group OPORA-Credit, and the Russian Bank for Development, the regional stage of the Business Success 2011 conference will bring together around 600 entrepreneurs from the Stavropol region, as well as experts from Russia’s biggest banks, and leasing and insurance companies. Conference participants include officials from the Ministry for Economic Development and Trade, Stavropol region governor Valery Gaevsky, and OPORA Russia president Sergei Borisov. The event will be transmitted live online, enabling business owners to watch the conference irrespective of location.

Uniastrum’s client base includes over 2,000 small enterprises, whose number rose more than 60% last year. As of January 1, 2011 the Bank’s SB lending portfolio totaled Rb 8.84 bn. Meantime, Uniastrum continues to expand and improve its small business financing activities by honing its loan schemes, forging closer links with regional SME assistance funds, and playing an active part in the government-sponsored SME lending program operated by the Russian Bank for Development.

“Making banking services more easily affordable is essential if Russia’s small and midsized business community is to grow and prosper,” notes Svetlana Chubakova, Uniastrum’s Vice President for Small Business Development. “Successfully tackling this and related issues means ensuring open dialog between businesses, banks, and government structures.”