OREANDA-NEWS. NOMOS-BANK and SME Bank (Russian Bank for Small and Medium Enterprises Support) have signed a cooperation agreement for the implementation of a mechanism of guarantee support to midsize businesses. The document states that SME Bank will provide a guarantee to repay loans issued by NOMOS-BANK to midsize business entities engaged in investment projects. The guarantee limit fixed for NOMOS-BANK is RUB 7 billion over 5 years.

The agreement makes it possible to provide loan facilities for businesses that do not have a sufficient collateral base for funding. The guarantee limit is set at 50% of the amount of loan issued to the enterprise with a cap of RUB 1 billion over a period of 2 to 10 years. Commission on the issuance of the guarantee will be between 1.5 % and 1.8 % per annum. Meanwhile, no less than 70% of the total cost of the investment project of a midsize enterprise should focus on capital investments. Guarantees are made available to midsize businesses by order of the Government of the Russian Federation of December 28, 2012, ©ц 1451 .

Ў°We are pleased to expand cooperation with SME Bank. The mechanism of making available state guarantees to midsize businesses will help increase investment activity. As a result, this is good both for enterprises modernizing existing facilities or creating new industries and for banks which actively provide project finance and investment credit since the mechanism reduces risk associated with project implementation,Ў± said Director of the department of project financing at NOMOS-BANK, Alexei Kovalev .

Ў°We hope that cooperation with NOMOS-BANK will provide a good start in the search for significant investment projects that need government support,Ў± said Board Member and Deputy Chairman of SME Bank, Olesya Teplouhova. Ў°We calculate that the RUB 7 billion agreement will allow us to jointly implement a minimum of 10 investment projects.Ў±

SME Bank and NOMOS-BANK have been cooperating within the Financial Support Program for SMEs since 2009. Over this time 1,170 SMEs received support with total amount disbursed funds in excess of RUB 7.2 billion.