Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb. 26 / Trend N. Ismayilova /
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) strives to introduce best practices in managing bad assets in Azerbaijan, IFC project manager Garth Bedford said at the workshop in the Central Bank of Azerbaijan.
"As Azerbaijan was less affected by global financial crisis, one managed to maintain the level of bad assets in the country at a sufficiently low level", Bedford said.
According to him, today, there are three basic ways to remove bad assets from the balance sheet - a private placement, the method of auction and a limited auction.
"As securitization in Azerbaijan is a new concept, the removal of bad assets through placing the securities has not been applied yet.
The most used method in Azerbaijan is a method of the private placement, which is fast, but not always effective, because the banks do not always manage to sell assets at sufficiently high prices.
"There no companies in the country that can provide such services for buying and selling bad assets", he said.
According to Bedford, today, the main problem of the banking sector is the inefficient management of bad assets. IFC intends to support the Azerbaijani banks in the implementation of best practices in solving problems with bad loans.
The IFC project was launched in August 2009 to support financial institutions in the region. Over 10 workshops have been conducted within the program. About 360 people participated there. The purpose of the project is to help the banks in creating strategies to solve the problems with bad loans and the introduction of the new lending practices.
The workshop was organized by the IFC, PriceWaterHouse, as well as the Association of Professional Risk Managers of Azerbaijan. Over 30 financial institutions participated in it.