On 13 November 2013, the UK Export Finance agency announced that it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Russian Alfa Bank to promote British exports to Russia. The deal included a 50 million USD facility, aimed especially at British small and medium-sized entreprises. However, only contracts worth at least 1 million USD will be considered.
In the UKEF press release, the Trade Minister was cited saying "Today's trade delegation aims to identify and secure further opportunities for UK exporters. Making it easier for British firms to export must be a priority for rebalancing the economy. But exporting is not just for big corporates or the tech sector, and that is why we have launched the new 'Exporting is GREAT campaign', focused specifically on small and medium-sized businesses".
The funds for the facility will come from the Direct Lending Facility introduced in December 2012 (cf. Related Measures).
A state measure in the GTA database is assessed solely in terms of the extent to which its implementation affects the extent of discrimination against foreign commercial interests. On this metric, the state aid proposed here is discriminatory.