We can see that banks did not restrict lending, as was the case, for example, during the crisis of 2014–2015, but, on the contrary, significantly increased it and, moreover, restructured a large volume of their clients’ loans. That is to say, they supported borrowers in an acutely difficult period when they needed financial resources. This made it possible to avoid more serious consequences both for banks, whose credit losses were not as serious as many expected, and for the economy as a whole. It seems to me that this shows that building such long-term relationships with clients is very important, and banks had the opportunity to do so because the financial stability they had established in previous years made it possible to carry out a policy of not demanding that their clients immediately repay loans and continuing to issue loans. Therefore, it seems to me that this is a positive result of an overall very difficult last year. The corporate portfolio has shown serious growth, by almost 10%, and continues to grow. In the first four months of this year, growth was 3.5%, taking January to the end of April into account. That is, this trend continues to be seen this year as well. At the same time, it is important that not only large companies are being granted loans, but small- and medium-sized businesses too: the portfolio of small- and medium-sized businesses grew by 20% last year, which is a record level since 2014.
This is because we understand that these implementations require that IT systems be developed because almost everything is now tied to IT. We want banks to be able to do this at the same time. There are exceptions when there are extraordinary situations or risks. Or when banks, due to the fact that this is an easing measure, a preferential regime, ask us to introduce these new changes faster. Sometimes we just let them choose: they can remain on the old system or migrate to the new system. This is more difficult for us, but we understand that it is easier for banks to work this way. In our opinion, this increases predictability of the implementation of all our changes in regulation. I would like to say that, together with you, we are trying to remove bottlenecks, to reduce costs where possible, so that banks of varying sizes have the opportunity to work and benefit their customers. For example, for a long time there have been discussions, on all the platforms and during meetings, of banks’ access to funds from the budget, state-owned companies, and today Mr. Aksakov spoke about this, about a draft law. We hope that it will indeed be adopted, and that this topic will no longer require constant discussion. We understand how serious it is from the point of view of ensuring an equal playing field regarding access to state and state companies’ funds. All the more so because they form a significant part of banks’ equities.