The Russian government decided to lower the minimum amount of preferential loans for SMEs from 3 million rubles (about 50,000 US dollars) to 500,000 rubles (7720 US dollars). 

The spokesman from Russian Ministry of Economic Development said that the current limitation of preferential loans is from 3 million rubles to 100 million rubles ($1.5 million). Then after the adjustment, it will become from 500,000 rubles to 500 million rubles (7.7 million US dollars), which increased the flexibility of the loan and the number of recipients. 

The preferential loan program was implemented on February 25, 2019, allowing SMEs to obtain loans from authorized banks at a rate not exceeding 8.5% per year, and 69 banks have engaged in this program. 

The program is implemented within the framework of the National Project on “SMEs and Entrepreneurship Initiatives”, and one of the main objectives of the project is to increase the contribution of SMEs in GDP from the current 22.3% to 32.5%. And in the following six years, the number of people employed in the SMEs and Start-up companies will rise up to 5.8 million.