Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0

Author-Name: Svetlana Popova
Author-Email: PopovaSV@mail.cbr.ru
Author-Workplace-Name: Bank of Russia and HSE University, Russian Federation

Author-Name: Natalia Turdyeva
Author-Email: turdyevana@cbr.ru
Author-Workplace-Name: Bank of Russia, Russian Federation

Title: Environmental and Climate Factors of Corporate Lending in Russia

Abstract: This paper analyses how Russian banks incorporate environmental and climate factors
into corporate loan pricing. Our findings suggest that, in the absence of any regulation of
”green” finance in Russia, banks do not take into account the impact of borrowers on the
environment when setting interest rates. While Russian banks impose markups on interest
rates for loans to more polluting firms, those markups are economically insignificant. The
largest markups are observed among large private domestic banks, while state-owned banks
impose the lowest. Specifically, the interest rate on loans from large private domestic banks
to highly-polluting firms is only 0.04–0.07 percentage points higher than that for ’green’
firms. These minimal differences in loan pricing indicate that under the current regulations,
Russian banks do not significantly differentiate lending terms between ’green’ companies
and others.
We examine the heterogeneity of the price setting across different bank groups — stateowned,
foreign-owned, or privately-held banks — considering the intensity of CO2 emissions
at the industry and firm level, as well as firms’ export status. For the analysis, we exploit
unique monthly loan-level data provided by the Central Bank of Russia’s credit register,
covering the period from 2017 to 2022, along with firm-level data on environmental fees for
pollution of air, water and waste disposal.

Length: 36 pages
Creation-Date: 2024-12
Revision-Date:
Publication-Status:
File-URL: https://www.cbr.ru/StaticHtml/File/170782/wp_143.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
File-Function:
Number: wps143
Classification-JEL: G21, G28, Q56, D22, E43, L51, O13
Keywords: Corporate loan pricing, credit register, Russian banks, loan-level data, ”brown”
companies, ”green” companies, environmental fees, pollution, state-owned banks, export
Handle:RePEc:bkr:wpaper: wps143