Azerbaijan, Baku, 31 January /corr. Trend I.Khalolova / The President of the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB), Haiterrin Kaplan, arrived in Baku on a working visit to study the possibilities of expanding the Bank's activities in the real sector in Azerbaijan.
The Director from Azerbaijan in the Bank, Deputy Minister of Economic Development, Mikail Jabbarov, said that the Bank may look through the possibilities of co-operation with Azerbaijan Investment Company (AIC) exactly via this prism, on which a Memorandum of Understanding has been signed.
The activities of AIC are limited with investments to the capital, while the Black Sea Bank is willing provide credits. According to Jabbarov, currently the Bank has a huge portfolio in Azerbaijan and if the amount of the country's participation in the capital of the Bank makes up 2%, the amount of their projects in Azerbaijan makes up 7% from the aggregate portfolio of the BSTDB.
"At the same time, we highlighted that mainly they have been concentrated in the financial sector. We insisted on the issue that their projects would be more active in the real sector and it was one of the goals of the visit of Bank's President to Azerbaijan," Deputy Minister said.
The second goal was that the Bank has huge portfolio with regards to the private sector and therefore, during the visit, meetings were held with the representatives of this sector.
In addition, he met with the manager in the Bank from Azerbaijan, Minister of Economic Development, Heydar Babayev. The meeting stated that the Bank's capital increased from current $1.5bln to $3bln.