October, 16 The loan portfolios comprising loans offered to SMEs rose by 10% in the first half of 2012 and reached 4.3 trillion RUR. A year earlier, these portfolios only rose by 6.4%. These data are available from the report on SMEs lending in Russia that was drawn up by Expert RA Agency, SKB-Bank’s press service reports.

The experts behind this report point out that these were the top 30 SMEs-lending banks in the country that contributed most to this positive dynamics. SKB-Bank had one of the fastest SME loan portfolio growth rates: the bank’s portfolio soared by 41.14% in the first half of 2012 and exceeded 25bn RUR. This meant that SKB-Bank was given the 14th position in the ranking of Russian banks with the greatest loan portfolios and became the largest lender to SMEs outside Moscow.

According to Expert RA, SKB-Bank issued 11.4bn RUR worth of loans to small and medium-sized enterprises in the first half of the year. The bank’s loans were taken out by businesses in different parts of the country: SKB-Bank proved one of the top ten lenders to SMEs in Ural, North-Western, and Far Eastern Federal Districts and one of the top fifteen in Siberian and Southern Federal Districts.