Azerbaijan, Baku, 18 March / corr. Trend I. Khalilova/ The Azerbaijani government does not plan to increase its budget assignments for the privileged crediting of entrepreneurs through the National Fund of Support to Entrepreneurs because of its bad effect on the banking, Heydar Babayev, the minister of economic development of Azerbaijan said during his meeting with the members of the Caspian Business Club.
"We have met with the members of the banking circles and we understand that banks do not have access to the privileged resources of National Fund of Support to Entrepreneurs, therefore we plan to keep the level of budget assignments for the entrepreneurs at its current level in the years to come as well," the minister said.
In 2008, some AZN80mln will be allocated for this purpose as before. The National Fund of Support to Entrepreneurs has granted a privileged credit worth of AZN235.6mln to 6,194 entrepreneurs for the last 4 years. Some 60,000 new jobs will be created as a result of the financing of the projects.
According to the minister, the Ministry of Economic Development plans to appeal to the government to change the form of property of the National Fund by giving it independence. The Fund is expected to become a joint stock company.
Once the budget financing is terminated in 2009, it will cause a deficit in resources as the re-payment of the resources is not at a high level and is expected to be on the level of AZN30mln in the future.
The sum of credits granted through the National Fund totaled to AZN90.7mln, AZN74mln accounts for the budget resources and AZN17mln for the re-payments of credits granted earlier.
According to the National Fund rules, the micro and small credits are granted for 2 years, medium credits for 3 years, large credits for 5 years and large-scale credits for 7 years.
The credit resources are distributed through 32 authorized credit organizations. Some 46 banks operate in Azerbaijan at present.
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