OREANDA-NEWS. November 21, 2014. Russian Agricultural Bank (RusAg) held an extended Management Board meeting with participation of the Heads of Regional Branches and Representative Offices. The main tasks of the Bank for 2015 announced at the meeting are an accelerated business growth and an increase in efficiency while maintaining the leading positions in agribusiness financing.

Despite the imposed sanctions and the slowdown in investment activity, the Bank shows positive operating results. In particular, as of October 1, 2014, RusAg’s loan portfolio amounted to around RUB 1.42 trillion, with corporate loans totaling RUB 1.16 trillion (a 12.8% growth since the year start), and retail loans reaching RUB 261 billion (a 5.5% growth).

RusAg’s development priorities are the balanced growth of all business segments through industry diversification, mitigation of credit risks, product range development and expansion of sales channels. At the same time, as it was pointed out at the Management Board meeting, the implementation of the state task on the development of the strategic agribusiness industry remains the key priority. The Bank accounts for about 50% of all loans extended to Russian agribusiness. Such serious results became possible thanks to consistent work done by the Bank in the framework of the Russian Agricultural Bank Strategy through 2020 which is aligned with the main provisions of the State Program on Agribusiness Development and Regulation of Farm Produce, Raw Materials and Foodstuffs Markets for 2013-2020.

“Today, Russian Agricultural Bank is not only a financial institution but also accomplishes the state policy task on increasing the domestic agribusiness efficiency and accelerated foodstuffs import substitution. The credit resources extended by the Bank under the State Programs on Agribusiness Development alone from 2008 till October 1, 2014 amounted to around RUB 2.63 trillion. The Bank is ready to expand the credit support to the industry and to actively provide financial resources for projects in production, processing, storage and sales of agricultural production. Besides, we are ready to use all the branch network resources with the aim of unwavering completion of all tasks in the regions of the Bank’s presence”, Dmitry Patrushev, Chairman of the Board and CEO, said.