RBC.Rating has recently come up with the Russian banks’ ranking based on the volume and number of loans offered to small and medium-scale businesses in the first half of 2008. Only two Ural banks were actually featured among the top forty companies on the list, SKB-Bank’s press officer says.

The agency’s analysts report the SME lending volumes kept increasing in the six months of 2008; it went up by 22% and amounted to 1.322 trillion RUR. The number of loans given to small enterprises nearly doubled.

SKB-Bank topped Ural Federal District-based banks’ rating in terms of the number of loans offered to SMEs in the first half of the year. The bank provided its business customers with 3,614 loans, which secured it the 11th position in the country-wide rating. This was better than any Ural bank managed to achieve.

SKB-Bank, with its 2.5 billion RUR worth of loans to SMEs, was also given the 39th position in the All-Russian banks’ rating based on the volume of offered loans. This was a great step forward compared to the 56th position a year earlier.