OREANDA-NEWS. ABH Miratorg (the largest Russian investor in the agricultural industry, with over RUB 90 bln of investment) and Sberbank CIB have signed the Russian agricultural industry’s first ever 15-year loan agreement. A total of RUB 1 bln of financing was provided under the agreement.

It was possible to sign this agreement because at the end of 2012, the Decree of the Russian Government “On the approval of the Rules for providing and allocating subsidies from the federal budget of territorial entities of the Russian Federation in order to reimburse expenses for paying interest on loans received from Russian credit organisations and financing received from agricultural consumer credit co-operatives” came into effect. The Decree provides for increasing the credit period from eight to fifteen years for financing that is subject to subsidised interest rates.

ABH Miratorg will invest the funds provided under the agreement in developing its project for creating high-yielding breeds of beef cattle in the Kaliningrad Region. Currently the Holding Company has three farms in the aforementioned region and has imported 12,000 head of Aberdeen Angus beef cattle from the U.S.