øystein olsen : launch of the new 50 - krone and 500 - krone banknotes speech by mr øystein olsen, governor of norges bank ( central bank of norway ), at rs noatun, horten, 18 october 2018. * * * more information on the banknotes are available on norges bank's website. good morning. it is a great pleasure to be here in horten and noatun to mark this important occasion for norges bank. on 30 may 2017, we went to lofoten to launch the new 100 - krone and 200 - krone banknotes – the first two denominations in norway ’ s new banknote series. today, we are in horten to celebrate the launch of the new 50 - krone and 500 - krone banknotes. so why did we choose horten? this is an easy question to answer. the primary motif of the new 500 - krone banknote is a rescue lifeboat. since its foundation in 1891, the norwegian society for sea rescue has saved more than 6 000 lives at sea. through their tremendous efforts, largely based on volunteer work, the norwegian society for sea rescue has contributed to making norway ’ s coastline safer and more prosperous. many of the lifeboat crews are trained where we are today, here at rs noatun. these crews are on stand - by around the clock to assist people and vessels along the entire norwegian coast. the boat you can see on the front of the 500 - krone banknote is the lifeboat rs 14 stavanger, launched in 1901. the stavanger was built not far from here, at tollerodden in larvik, and is an excellent example of the many wooden boats designed by shipbuilder legend colin archer. it was recently decided to return the stavanger to tollerodden, where it will be one of the main attractions at a planned colin archer centre. the sailing performance of colin archer ’ s lifeboats was superior to that of the boats constructed by his competitors at that time, and they are beautifully designed. if you would like to see what a real colin archer lifeboat looks like, i recommend a trip down to the jetty once the official part of the programme here at noatun is over to see the rs 1 colin archer, which, thanks to the dedicated efforts of enthusiasts, is still in magnificent condition. moored next to it is the rs 135 kaptein

face. nonetheless, the loan portfolio has expanded by nearly 15 %, specifically 14. 7 %, since the beginning of the year. the number of borrowers has increased by 63. 6 % since early 2020, to exceed 450, 000 companies. we know that small and medium - sized businesses develop predominantly owing to their profits, their equity, which is not bad, and that nowadays a large number of enterprises have had an opportunity to apply to banks and receive these loans during this period. indeed, companies applied for loans because they were forced to do that and it was primarily associated with their need to make up for decreased revenues in the second quarter. the preferential lending programmes launched by the government were essential in this regard, including both the 0 % wage loan and 2 % programmes. banks have granted over 0. 5 trillion rubles since the beginning of the year within these programmes. i would like to remind you that, in order to support these programmes, to maintain lending, the bank of russia also launched its preferential refinancing instrument for banks, in addition to the one that existed earlier, with the limit of 500 billion rubles exactly to support the portfolio of projects. we are well aware that, although the lending programmes with state guarantees, sureties, as well as corporate sureties have expanded, preferential programmes are not accessible to all enterprises, but only to a small portion of them. the objective of our programme was to incentivise banks to maintain their 1 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches lending amounts. in other words, those banks that did not reduce their sme lending considerably, including both under preferential and standard programmes, received funds from the central bank at a rather attractive interest rate, recently equalling 2. 25 %. this was a resource that truly helped maintain lending volumes. a survey by opora russia — we are closely monitoring your survey findings — shows that businesses generally record a higher accessibility of loans in recent months. we appreciate this view. nonetheless, we can see that currently loans are mostly concentrated with large banks, but we are confident that both banks with a basic licence and regional banks will be capable to significantly contribute to the small business development and become more flexible since they better understand clients ’ interests and regional specifics. we are going to advance this segment of the banking system. not only large banks have had access to our special - purpose instrument : 55 banks have used it, including regional banks and those banks that received corporate sureties.