BAKU, Azerbaijan, August 21. For the period of January through July 2023, Bank Respublika of Azerbaijan came out on top in terms of the quantity of soft loans given to businesses. During the reporting period, this bank made soft loans of 17 million manats ($9 million) to business owners, the Entrepreneurship Development Fund under the Ministry of Economy of Azerbaijan informed Trend.
PASHA Bank (13 million manat, $7 million) came in second for commercial loans, with Rabitabank (7 million manat, $4 million) coming in third.
In terms of lending volume, Expressbank (5 million manats) and AccessBank (6 million manats; $3 million) were also in the top 5.
In 2022, the Azerbaijani Fund for the Development of Entrepreneurship provided funding for 2,726 investment projects. The fund distributed soft loans totaling 145 million manat ($85 million) in total.
According to the Foundation's information, 87 million manat ($51 million) of the issued loans are for the production of agricultural products, 37 million manat ($21 million) for the production and processing of industrial products, 9 million manat ($5 million) for tourism, and 12 million manat ($7 million) for other sectors.