The industry is seduced by mortgages – Newspaper Kommersant No. 32 (7477) of 21.02.2023

The Ministry of Industry and Trade proposes to expand industrial mortgages at 3% or 5% per annum, primarily through the distribution of such loans not only for the purchase of finished premises, but also for the construction, modernization, repair of facilities and the purchase of land. It is also planned to increase from 500 million to 2 billion rubles. a loan limit, regardless of which of these purposes it is taken for, and establish a “norm” for the value of real estate acquired under the program. The business community supports the initiative, noting that this will increase the effectiveness of the program, and limiting the cost of objects will help avoid price gouging on the market.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade has prepared new proposals to expand the industrial mortgage mechanism – as follows from the draft government decree published by the department, now we are talking about a more significant scaling of the program than previously announced. Recall that we are talking about soft loans, which should stimulate the accelerated deployment of production, in the amount of up to 500 million rubles. for the purchase of industrial real estate at 5% per annum (or 3% for technology companies) for up to seven years. The issuance of such loans began in December – now, as Kommersant was told in the Ministry of Industry and Trade, banks have concluded 15 agreements for a total of 1.1 billion rubles.

Initially, the program was designed to purchase ready-made industrial space, the need for which was estimated at 500 thousand square meters. m per year, to reduce the timing of investment projects. However, back in the fall, the Ministry of Industry and Trade came to the conclusion that it was not the purchase of ready-made premises that was more in demand among businesses, but their construction and modernization, in connection with this, it was planned to expand the program for these purposes, providing for such cases a more significant limit (see “Kommersant” dated 14 November).

The new version of the document of the Ministry of Industry and Trade develops this idea – in addition to extending the industrial mortgage for construction and repair, the department also proposes to allow the purchase of land plots for the operation of the acquired objects with borrowed funds (their area should not be more than twice the area of ​​the purchased buildings and structures, and the cost of the land should be no more than 20% of the total loan amount). At the same time, the agency is slightly changing its approach to increasing limits – according to the project, it is proposed to increase the maximum loan amount to 2 billion rubles. regardless of the purpose (that is, for the purchase of a ready-made site), and the term is up to 10 years (for technology companies – up to 15 years).

It is allowed by the project to receive a loan for several purposes at once, as well as several loans at once, but for a total amount of not more than 2 billion rubles. At the same time, the Ministry of Industry and Trade proposes to set standards for the cost of acquired objects: the price of 1 sq. m of industrial space should not exceed 75 thousand rubles, and 1 hectare of land – 20 million rubles. In addition to commercial banks (16 of them were selected), the project also includes VEB.RF as a creditor in the industrial mortgage program.

Maxim Tretyakov, vice-president of the NP Opora association, welcomes, first of all, the expansion of the purposes of using loans. “The problem is that many types of industries require very specific premises, so fitting them into abstract premises built for average production is inefficient,” he explains. The expansion of limits, adds Mr. Tretyakov, is also quite relevant for business, while he considers setting a ceiling on the cost of real estate acquired under the program to be reasonable – this will eliminate “artificial inflation of prices for industrial real estate, when, due to cheap loans subsidized from the budget, the market begins to spin up.” Also, he adds, now there are technical obstacles to the issuance of industrial mortgages by banks – due to problems with the assessment of collateral, in this regard, Maxim Tretyakov believes, inclusion in the VEB.RF program will make the program work.

Evgenia Kryuchkova