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Banks restructured loans worth 4.3 trillion rubles since start of pandemic

In January-May, portfolio of loans to small businesses grew by 6.4%

MOSCOW, July 13. /TASS/. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Russian banks have restructured loans worth almost 4.3 trillion rubles ($60.7 bln), head of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina said speaking in the Federation Council, upper house of parliament.

"To date, they have restructured almost 4.3 trillion rubles worth of loans," she said.

In January-May, portfolio of loans to small businesses grew by 6.4%.

"We understand that there is a part of compulsion in this growth in lending when enterprises take more loans in conditions of lower revenues," Nabiullina explained.

She recalled that in the beginning of the pandemic, the government launched a concessional lending program for small and medium-sized businesses. The loans are issued at 2.5% per annum and the limit of the program is 500 billion rubles ($7.07 bln). To date 300 billion rubles ($4.2bln) of this amount have been used. More than 90,000 enterprises were able to restructure their loans and the total amount of restructured loans amounted to almost 690 bln rubles ($9.7 bln).

In June, banks increased the issue of retail loans by 1% after a 0.2% growth in May and a 0.7% decline in April. On the whole, over the first half of the year, retail lending grew by 1.4%. "This is much lower than in the first half of last year (growth of 9.7% - TASS). But then there was accelerated growth rate in consumer lending, we took special measures to cool this segment," Nabullina said.