“Today, at a meeting of the Investment Committee of the Ministry of Economic Development under the leadership of Maxim Reshetnikov, the decision was made to approve the first such fund. Now we will finalize it within two weeks, I think that in the near future we will create the first fund,” Shuvalov said.
“We will make sure that the funds are not lost if they are invested through such a fund, this is the role of a development bank, such approaches were reported at a meeting with the President of the Russian Federation at the end of last year,” The head of the state corporation said, adding that the principles for the creation of funds were approved by the President.
Such funds are necessary so that if the initiator of the investment project does not have funds, he can replace them with capital, “which is formed with the help of a commercial bank and VEB,” Shuvalov noted.
“These can be any projects, both service and industrial”, – added the head of the state corporation.
In early December 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed the Russian government, together with the Bank of Russia and the state corporation VEB.RF, to consider creating capital funds to provide financing for investment projects implemented as part of Project Finance Factory.
It is assumed that the funds will be created at the expense of investments by VEB.RF and credit institutions and will provide an opportunity to form equity capital of investment projects in the amount of up to 10% of the cost of projects. At the same time, VEB.RF must guarantee a minimum return on investments of credit institutions in capital funds of at least 4% per annum (taking into account the distribution of benefits and risks between credit institutions and the state corporation specified).
Shuvalov said earlier that the state corporation is discussing an initiative to create capital funds with Sberbank, VTB and Gazprombank. According to him, VEB is ready to release about 500-700 billion rubles from the approved 1.3 trillion ruble anti-crisis program for these initiatives.
Taking into account the parallel reduction of the requirements for the equity participation of the initiator from 20% to 15%, raising funds through equity funds will help “factory” projects, the head of VEB noted.
