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EBRD may allocate manat loans to Azerbaijan (exclusive)

Business Materials 26 January 2017 12:25 (UTC +04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 26

By Anvar Mammadov, Azad Hasanli – Trend:

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) still wants to convert the loans it allocates to Azerbaijan into manats, the country’s local currency, but this depends on its availability, which means first issuing the local currency bonds or obtaining manats from a different source, Ivana Duarte, head of the EBRD resident office in Baku, told Trend.

She said that the EBRD intends to issue the local currency bonds, as there is strong demand from the private sector clients in the Azerbaijani market.

“We have been working with authorities [of Azerbaijan] and will continue doing so also in 2017 in order to be able to issue bonds in manats,” Duarte said. “We did issue local currency bonds in the neighboring country Georgia, which was well received by the market and was a very successful initiative.”

Earlier, a source in the Azerbaijani government told Trend that the delay in the issuance of the manat bonds by the EBRD is due to a number of technical nuances. The source added that no concrete timing for the release of the bonds by the bank has been defined.

The Baku office of the EBRD told Trend that the manat bonds will be sold within Azerbaijan and the issue of the bond delivery to the foreign markets can be considered in the future.

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