On April 28 international seminar “Banks and small entrepreneurship: facilitation of access to financial resources in South Federal District”. The seminar was organized by World Bank and Association of Regional Russian Banks.

The head of International Cooperation Department of bank Center-invest Olga Vysokova took part in the seminar. In her report she offered practical experience of Bank Center-invest for financial, informational and infrastructure support of SMEs:

• Bank Center-invest cooperates actively with foreign partners in the sphere of lending to SMEs. At present the largest international organizations (KfW, DEG, EBRD, IFC, USAID) have granted credit and guarantee lines to Bank Center-invest for SMEs to the amount of USD 37.5 million.

• Bank Center-invest together with Administration of Rostov region and Union of German Economy in Russian Federation have developed “Partner” project. In its frames the search of business partners from Germany for enterprises of Don region is exercised via the Internet. Informational portal “The Internet association of small enterprises of Don region” has started to work (www.amb-don.ru).

• Branch network of the Bank includes 33 branches and additional offices around Rostov region and also in Krasnodar and Volgograd cities. Modern technologies allow combining the work of all the branches into a whole highly efficient system and granting similarly high level of services to the customers of any branch.

According to the results of 2004, 74% of all the credits granted to small enterprises by local banks fall to Bank Center-invest. In 2004 the Bank granted over 3300 loans to the amount of RUR 6.1 billion to small enterprises.

At present over 8000 small enterprises and 4000 individual entrepreneurs are the customers of Bank Center-invest. By the end of the year Bank Center-invest plans to increase the number of clients (both small enterprises and individual entrepreneurs) up to 15 thousand and the volume of crediting – up to RUR 8 billion.