MOSCOW. May 25. (Interfax) - Head of the Association of Regional Banks of Russia and member of the State Duma Financial Markets Committee Anatoly Aksakov supports bankers in their appeal to prolong the period of Central Bank of Russia (CBR) refinancing to three years.

"We have prepared draft legislation that grants the CBR the right to refinance lending organizations for a period of up to three years," he said at the association's annual general meeting. Under the current law, the CBR can provide lenders with funds for only one year.

The heads of Russia's two largest banks, Sberbank of Russia and VTB , have repeatedly noted the necessity of prolonging the period of CBR refinancing.

In April, the CBR resumed providing funds as part of refinancing operations for up to one year.

"The CBR should more actively participate in supporting lending organizations, even more so since global practice supports this trend. Based on global practice and the situation on the domestic market, we believe that we also need to set this norm," Aksakov said.

Measures aimed at raising the quality and quantity of assets that the CBR can use as collateral should also be conducted, he said.

Besides that, work on standardizing loan products should be carried out - standards for retail lending, small and medium business lending, project financing and syndicated lending need to be developed, Aksakov said.

The CBR could also return to the anti-crisis practice of shouldering part of the risks involved in interbank lending. "We expect that the CBR will assume the mission of intensifying interbank lending in order to avoid the emergence of a 'bottleneck' in money flows. (