Current Trends in Bank Financing of Small and Medium-Sized Businesses in Russia

Abstract

The development of small and medium-sized businesses in Russia is associated with a number of problems, including low availability of bank loans as the main source of financing activity. During the pandemic, measures provided at the state level to support entrepreneurs helped to mitigate the negative consequences, however, the reduction in the number of small and medium-sized businesses continued. The purpose of the study is to analyze current trends in the development of bank financing of small and medium-sized businesses, the impact of the pandemic on its main indicators. The article examines the dynamics of the main indicators of bank financing of small and medium-sized businesses in 2019–2021: loan debts, including overdue loans, the volume of loans issued. With the help of Spearman's rank correlation coefficient, the relationship between the indicator of the debt burden of small and medium-sized businesses and the level of overdue debt on loans granted to small and medium-sized businesses in the context of federal districts is determined. The study showed that the relationship between these factors is weak, therefore, at present, the level of the debt burden of entrepreneurs does not significantly affect the formation of overdue loans, which puts forward the task of further searching for the causes of its occurrence and ways to reduce it.