MOSCOW—The EBRD said Tuesday it will lend euro500 million ($742 million) to Russia's small- and medium-sized businesses, a sector that still has limited access to long-term financing.
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development president Thomas Mirow told a televised conference in Moscow that it had struck a deal with state-backed bank Vneshekonombank to lend euro500 million to a dozen regional banks to support their local finance-starved enterprises. VEB's chairman Vladimir Dmitriev said that the bank would underwrite the loans.
Lesser companies watched helplessly last year as the Russian government handed out billions of dollars through VEB to several of the biggest banks and industrial groups to prevent them from falling into the hands of foreign creditors.
The EBRD has invested $11 billion in Russia since 1991, with some $2.7 billion coming in 2008.
On Monday it signed a deal worth up to euro1 billion with Rosnano, a state-run corporation for the development of the nascent high-tech sector.
The EBRD, owned by 61 countries and partly funded by the U.S. and European Union, uses investments to help develop market economies in formerly communist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
