Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday gave state-controlled banks a tight three-month deadline to hand out at least $13 billion in loans to major companies — and he told the bank's CEOs that they couldn't take vacations until they had followed orders.

Putin also told the Finance Ministry that it had a week to review options to raise taxes next year to plug the deficit that the ministry believes will exceed the previously anticipated 5 percent of the gross domestic product.

The Economic Development Ministry again lowered the projected decline in GDP this year, to 8.5 percent from 6 percent, in a forecast that it submitted to the Finance Ministry last week, a government source told reporters Monday.

In mid-February, Putin approved of a plan to earmark 300 billion rubles ($9.6 billion) in state guarantees for banks, hoping that it would encourage them to use massive state aid that they had previously received to issue loans at a reasonably low interest rate. More than four months later, no banks have received a single guarantee and instead have complained about the government's terms.

With the economy shrinking more than expected over a credit market freeze, Putin said Monday that the government had changed the terms to take into account criticism from the banks and expected them to pour more money into the economy.

"The state has met you halfway and is assuming the main risks," Putin said at an economic affairs meeting with his ministers and chiefs of the five largest state-controlled banks: VEB, Sberbank, VTB, Gazprombank and Rosselkhozbank.

He ordered the banks to issue at least 150 billion rubles in loans by Aug. 1, another 150 billion rubles by Sept. 1, and yet another 100 billion to 200 billion rubles by Oct. 1. He told the bank chiefs, including Sberbank's German Gref and VTB's Andrei Kostin, to make sure they did not take vacations until they set the work in motion to reach these targets.

Putin said he was aware that the banks faced the risk of running up a huge amount of bad debt from previous loans but said they must go ahead with new lending nevertheless.

"The fewer the loans, the bigger the risk of default, because by failing to restore lending you are dousing the economy and the real sector," he said.

Improvements in the government's terms for guarantees include a removal of barriers in getting access to them if a borrower becomes insolvent, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said after the meeting. If the company can't pay for more than one month, a bank will now be able to draw the government's guarantee immediately, he said.

A guarantee covers half of the actual loan, he said. The bank will then seek to recover the rest from the borrower, including by selling the collateral, Kudrin said.

Central Bank Chairman Sergei Ignatyev said in a meeting with Putin on Saturday that conditions were in place for resuming lending to industry and for a reversal of the economic decline.

"The outside crisis factors that were the thrusts, as it were, for our economic crisis are not active any more," Ignatyev said. "The oil price is normal and the capital outflow … steeply decreased. A lot depends on us now."

On Monday, Putin said it would be fair to look at the opportunities to raise some taxes that have remained intact in recent years. Kudrin said these included the tax on natural gas extraction and on tobacco, alcohol and gasoline.

Gazprom, the world's largest gas producer, would be little affected by the potential increase in the gas tax, VTB Capital said Monday. Each 10 percent increase would cause its profit to drop by 0.8 percent, the bank said in a note to investors.

Kudrin said the budget deficit next year would widen to more than the 5 percent planned earlier this year as a result of the greater deterioration of the economy.

He said again that oil prices were unlikely to remain at their current level of about $70 a barrel because demand was falling.