OREANDA-NEWS. August 17, 2011. I am happy to inform you about Russian Development Bank’s rebranding. From today, it has a new trade name ‘The Russian Bank to Support Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises’ in abbreviated form – SME Bank.

It’s very important for Vnesheconombank that its subsidiary Bank not only changes its name but gets a lot closer to small and medium-sized enterprises. The Bank’s rebranding demonstrates very important changes in the Bank’s activity. The Bank is going to become a key instrument in the whole system of the state’s support for small and medium-sized enterprises.

In the most immediate future SME Bank is to launch a number of new services and products to maximize support for SMEs. They include standardized credit cards intended among other things for those who have just decided to start their own business as well as projects in energy efficiency, consulting and education. We have also plans to start issuing a special journal to publish various, useful, practical information as well as analyze and explain concrete real situations that people working in SMEs come up against every day in the Russian Federation.

We’ll expand SME Bank’s range of instruments for it to become a full-fledged development institution to be responsible for promoting non-trade and innovation small and medium-sized enterprises which are in the long run supposed to become the basis for economic growth and account for a significant share in GDP.

There is no doubt that the attempts we are making now would make it possible for Vnesheconombank to cooperate with SME Bank in implementing programs aimed at supporting SMEs a lot more efficiently. The Russian Development Bank had a collection of success stories of real businessmen who enjoyed the Bank’s support on its internet site. I’m sure that SME Bank will have a lot more of such success stories.