MOSCOW, September 11. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s Sberbank has kept the forecast for granting loans to medium and small companies in 2014 at around 780 billion rubles despite geopolitical tensions, Andrei Sharov, vice president for small business at the bank, told reporters Thursday.

The loan portfolio in this segment reached 600 billion rubles in 2013, and the bank planned to raise it by around 30% in 2014.

“We are keeping the forecast. Furthermore, I would like to say that our market share is rising quite confidently. We grew by 6.5 percentage points over the last 18 months and we saw growth over the last quarter as well. But we need to admit that the medium and small business loan market is flat, it does not rise. The share of Sberbank rises on it nevertheless,” Sharov said.