BAKU, Azerbaijan, September 15. Azerbaijan's Bank Respublika took the first place in Azerbaijan in terms of volume of soft loans granted to businesses from January through August 2023, the Entrepreneurship Development Fund under the Ministry of Economy of Azerbaijan told Trend.
Bank Respublika issued soft loans totaling 21.9 million manat ($12.8 million) to entrepreneurs in the reporting period.
PASHA Bank (15 million manat, which is $8.8 million) took the second position on the volume of business lending, Rabitabank (8.5 million manat, which is $4.9 million) took the third place.
AccessBank (7.7 million manat, which is $4.5 million) and Expressbank (7.6 million manat, which is $4.4 million) were also in the top 5 in terms of lending volume.
It should be reminded that in total, the Entrepreneurship Development Fund of Azerbaijan financed 2,726 investment projects in 2022. In total, the Fund issued soft loans worth 145.9 million manat ($85.8 million).
The Fund's data shows that 87.1 million manat ($51.2 million) of the issued loans are for agricultural production, 37.3 million manat ($21.9 million) for production and processing of industrial products, 9.1 million manat ($5.3 million) for tourism and 12.4 million manat ($7.2 million) for other sectors.