MOSCOW, February 22. /TASS/. Mortgage lending rates are forecasted to drop to all-time low figures in 2017, Chief Executive Officer of Sberbank Herman Gref said on Wednesday at the meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Our mortgage rates are all-time low at present. The rates will definitely fall this year, considering fairly ambitious plans in place to reduce inflation. Therefore I believe we will have the record lowest mortgage rates this year," Gref said.
At the same time, the all-time low amount of nonperforming loans extended to small and medium enterprises was recorded with use of big data analysis, the banker said.
"Arrears in the small business [loans] are just 11 million rubles ($190,100), this is a record low figure," Gref said.
The share of small and medium enterprises in Sberbank’s corporate loan portfolio is over 35%. Sberbank extended loans amounting to over 900 bln rubles ($15.6 bln) to this category of clients in 2016, Senior Vice President of the bank Anatoly Popov told TASS earlier.