ALGIERS, Algeria, May 21. The Black Sea Trade and Development (BSTDB) stands ready to support Azerbaijan in future public-private partnership (PPP) projects, BSTDB President Dr. Serhat Köksal said in an exclusive interview with Trend on the sidelines of the Islamic Development Bank Group (IsDB) in Algiers.
“Azerbaijan has invested heavily for being a transport hub in
Eurasia. They have built railways, roads, ports, and until now they
have used state sources. We have seen that the PPP unit
has been established in 2023 under the Ministry of Economy. It's a
very welcome development,
because PPP projects require high expertise. As a bank, we have
extensive experience in PPPs on agribusiness, logistics and health
sectors. So we plan to expand our portfolio of financing projects
with PPPs and also state projects. We will be more than happy to
support Azerbaijan in PPP projects they will do in the future,” he
said.
The BSTDB President pointed out that Ziya Aliyev has started his duty in the bank. “We are grateful to have him. It has been nearly one month and he has started to support the management very much,” he said.
New country strategy for Azerbaijan
“Now we are implementing our medium-term strategy and business
plan, which has been prepared for 2023-2026. Normally, we have
annual country strategies, but because of the geopolitical conflict
in the Black Sea region, as our bank has been affected by
that, we haven't prepared this four-year period individual country
strategies. But now we are in a very good shape, we have succeeded
to overcome the impact of the conflict in Black Sea region,” he
said.
Köksal noted that the BSTDB is planning to start individual
country strategies starting from
2027.
“So we will have annual individual country strategies for 2027-2030. As you know, we have a dual mandate, which are economic development and regional cooperation among our member countries. We need to support economic development and increase regional cooperation among our member countries. Any sectors or projects serving for this dual mandate will be welcome and will be prioritized,” he explained.
Cooperation with IsDB
“Azerbaijan, Türkiye and Albania are common members and they
have a common mandate to support Sustainable Development Goals of
member countries. This is a very good platform to have knowledge
sharing, discuss some innovative solutions to interconnected
problems. it's a very good environment for collaboration with
other
counterparties. We are not expected to sign any documents in this
meeting. We did a loan agreement with Standart Chartered under the
guarantee of the Islamic Corporation for the Insurance of
Investment and Export Credit (ICIEC) worth 150 million euros and we
are grateful for ICIEC for this transaction,” he said.
Applying Islamic banking principles in BSTDB region
Köksal noted that not all countries in the Black Sea region have Islamic finance institutions, but it's not an impediment for them to borrow from Islamic finance institutions abroad and use these funds in their countries.
“New financing instruments are always welcome. Türkiye, Azerbaijan and Albania are members of ISDB and these countries have Islamic finance institutions. Other ones are not expected to establish them in the near future due to the lack of demand there. But if there is enough appetite, we can see Islamic finance to be prevalent in all these BSTDB members. Also, we may introduce these Islamic products in BSTDB, if we see adequate demand for them,” he explained.