OREANDA-NEWS. Sberbank and Russia’s Federal Agency for Fisheries entered into a cooperation agreement at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. The agreement was signed by Herman Gref, CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board of the Bank, and Ilya Shestakov, Deputy Russian Minister of Agriculture, Head of the Federal Agency for Fisheries.

The cooperation agreement envisages joint work on the State Programme of the Russian Federation “Development of the Fishing Industry”, including provision of lending to fishing industry enterprises and cooperation on introducing a system for electronic auctioning of aquatic biological resources via an electronic trading platform.

“By signing this agreement we confirm our commitment to offering full-fledged support to federal programmes. Sberbank always seeks to participate in creating effective business mechanisms, in this case, the creation of an electronic auction platform for trading aquatic biological resources. This will act as both a trading service and a guarantee of secure settlement for transactions,” commented Herman Gref, CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank.

“The agreement that we have signed with Sberbank paves the way for a new stage of development: the guarantee of financing will allow companies of the sector to increase their investment activity. This will allow modern technology to be introduced, and as a result, productivity will increase. I am certain that joint projects with Sberbank will significantly contribute to the successful completion of the state programme to develop the Russian fishing industry,” said Ilya Shestakov, Head of the Federal Agency for Fisheries, commenting on the signed document.

Sberbank is Russia’s largest bank and a leading global financial institution. Sberbank holds almost one third of aggregate Russian banking sector assets, it is the key lender to the national economy and the biggest deposit taker in Russia. The Central Bank of the Russian Federation is the founder and principal shareholder of Sberbank owning 50% of the Bank's authorized capital plus one voting share, with the remaining 50% held by domestic and international investors. Sberbank has more than 135 million individual customers and more than 1 million corporate clients in 22 countries. Sberbank has the largest distribution network in Russia with almost 17,000 branches, and its international operations include UK, US, CIS, Central and Eastern Europe, Turkey and other countries.