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St. Petersburg, Russia, June 3, 2010
—IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is partnering with Russia’s Bank Saint Petersburg to expand access to trade finance for small and medium enterprises in the northwest region of Russia.
IFC is providing Bank Saint Petersburg with a $40 million guarantee facility through its Global Trade Finance Program. This first investment by IFC in Bank Saint Petersburg will allow the bank to provide enhanced trade finance solutions for its import and export clients and contribute to foreign trade development in Russia.
Snezana Stoiljkovic, IFC Director for Central and Eastern Europe, said, “Trade finance helps restore and expand trade ties between companies and countries. We see significant potential for expansion of our Global Trade Finance Program in Russia in partnership with Bank Saint Petersburg, which will open new foreign trade opportunities for its clients.”
Alexander Savelyev, Chairman of the Management Board of Bank Saint Petersburg, said, ”The IFC Global Trade Finance Program will expand our capacity to finance our customers’ foreign trade transactions and connect us to IFC’s global network of participating partner banks.”
The IFC Global Trade Finance Program supports trade in emerging markets worldwide by providing trade risk mitigation and trade advisory services. The program extends and complements the capacity of banks to deliver trade finance services in challenging markets where interbank facilities may be limited. Through the program, IFC helps developing countries increase their share of global trade flows and promotes the movement of goods and services between major emerging market economies such as Russia and its neighbors. Since the program was established in 2005, IFC has provided more than $7.1 billion in guarantees, supporting over 5,500 trade transactions into and between emerging markets through a network of more than 360 participating partner banks.
About IFC
IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, creates opportunity for people to escape poverty and improve their lives. We foster sustainable economic growth in developing countries by supporting private sector development, mobilizing private capital, and providing advisory and risk mitigation services to businesses and governments. Our new investments totaled $14.5 billion in fiscal 2009, helping channel capital into developing countries during the financial crisis. For more information, visit
www.ifc.org
.
About Bank Saint Petersburg
Bank Saint Petersburg
is the leading privately owned bank in the northwest of Russia. Founded in 1990, the Bank has in recent years become an integral part of the financial sector in the region. Today, the bank provides services to over 950,000 individuals and 34,600 corporate clients through its 36 offices in St. Petersburg, the Leningrad Region, Moscow, Kaliningrad, and Nizhniy Novgorod. Based on its FY2009 performance, it ranks 17
th
by assets and 13
th
by retail deposits among Russian banks, according to Interfax. For more information, visit
www.bspb.ru
.
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