We applied them because the external conditions throughout 2015 were persistently challenging, even extraordinary, and really required the Bank of Russia to take special substandard measures. The Bank of Russia used special-purpose refinancing instruments which somewhat backed up the real sector in the fields where the market failed: project financing, non-commodity exports, and small business. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Now, the upcoming transition to structural liquidity surplus is putting the expansion of specialpurpose instruments on hold. The efficiency of these instruments varies, that is why we will focus on fine-tuning them. Thereby, we have revised the criteria for driving non-commodity exports in order to focus on technological and manufacturing projects. As for project financing, we will refinance liabilities only for the projects already selected by the Interdepartmental Commission. The use of allocated limits only slightly exceeds 70% or 97 billion rubles. To solve the issue of external debt repayments, FX refinancing instruments were used. As a result, the external debt shrank by $ billion, i.e. by 16%, in 2015. The total debt reduction for the two years was 30%. It means that the debt burden for our economy has decreased considerably. Banks’ demand for foreign currency, provided by the Bank of Russia, was sinking noticeably over the past year and we are gradually abandoning these instruments. We expect banks to redeem the FX debt by the end of next year. We offered banks temporary regulatory easing to support the financial system.

In some regions it was almost impossible to buy the policy without additional foisted services, there were difficulties with reimbursement of damages. The overall situation has improved, but some regions still experience difficulties with OSAGO. We have introduced an electronic OSAGO policy. For now, only 200,000 electronic policies have been issued, that is not many. Therefore, we welcome the law that would bind insurers to issue an electronic policy upon the customer’s request from January 2017. Last year, we improved the European accident statement rules – documenting road traffic accidents without involvement of the road police has become easier and more convenient. Microfinance organisations. Microfinancing is discussed with fervour. I would like to stress, that we believe it to be short-sighted to ban microfinancing. Short-term loans are in demand and if there is no regulated business, consumers will turn to illegal lenders. We took measures to ensure better protection of citizens’ rights, primarily, by limiting the maximum effective interest rate and fines and interests on overdue loans. And I believe we should move from the fourfold maximum to the twofold on the legislative level. As for illegal lenders, this problem needs a legislative solution, among other things. The accountability of illegal lenders is currently not very serious, so to say. Moreover, ironically enough, the illegal lender can recover the debt in court. We believe it to be important to deprive agreements with illegal lenders of relief at law. Non-governmental pension funds. We have established a system of pension savings guarantees.