Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 1
By Elchin Mehdiyev – Trend:
The process of compensating US dollar loans of the Azerbaijani population, on which people suffered losses as a result of the devaluation, has been fully completed, chairman of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) Elman Rustamov said, Trend reports on Aug. 1.
Rustamov made the remarks in Baku at the meeting related to the socio-economic sphere and chaired by President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev.
He stressed that there is a decrease in interest rates in the economy.
"Despite the general fund forms consumer loans with high interest rates, the average value of this indicator on business loans is 11 percent, which is close to our discount rate,” Rustamov said.
“This shows that the interest rate and interest rate policy of the Central Bank began to play an important role in the formation of interest rates, both on business loans and on the population’s deposits,” he said. “During the crisis, dollarization occurred. But today we see a decrease in its level. Dollarization of the population’s deposits decreased from 85 percent to 56 percent in 2016, while loans - from 52 percent to 35 percent.”
“The credit activity is underway,” Rustamov stressed. “The volume of loans increased by 3.6 percent in January-June 2019. Consumer loans mainly accounted for this growth - nine percent, while business loans, loans in the real sector decreased by 0.3 percent.”
"We think that we must be careful,” he said. “The growth of consumer loans should be closely monitored. An increase in the debt burden of the population, as well as its approximation to 50 percent in the portfolio of the banking sector, may cause problems in the future. Today there is great liquidity in the banking sector. But, all the same, there is no increase in the number of business loans."