Azerbaijan, Baku, 5 September / Trend I.Khalilova / The National Fund for Entrepreneurship Development (NFED) completed spending of 85.3% of finance envisaged at the state budget-2008 for soft credit for businessmen's investment projects, the Economic Development Minister said on 5 September. AZN 74mln is expected to be granted a soft credit 63.8mln of which have been handed over to exchequer of the NFED
The NFED has allocated AZN 63.1mln to finance 556 entrepreneurs in 52 cities and regions of the country.
The National Fund issues soft credits through 29 authorized business banks, one non-bank credit organization and four credit unions.
More than 78% of financed projects account for regions and 86% of projects - for production purposes.
Soft credits were issued for industrial production field (104 projects), production and processing of agricultural goods and development of farmer economy (400 projects), development of tourism infrastructure (29 projects), as well as service field (22 projects). It is planned to create about 6,700 new jobs through the financed projects in 2008.
Terms of micro and small loans issuing has been determined at two, medium - to three, big - to five and huge to seven years. In accordance with the NFED Observation Council's decision, exceptions may be made to extend terms of loans. Maximum amount of loan falling on each entrepreneur makes up AZN 3mln. Loan interest rates should not exceed 7%.
A total of AZN 80mln was deposited for the NFED at the state budget in 2008 and AZN 6mln of them will be spent to finance entrepreneurs of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. The National Fund expects that perhaps more than AZN 100mln will be allocated to entrepreneurs through express loan resources in 2008.
The exchange rate for US dollar is AZN 0.8154 on 5 September.
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