Azerbaijan, Baku, August 6 /Trend, N.Ismayilova/
The WB mission headed by the director of financial program and financial coordinator for the South Caucasus, Michael Edwards, will visit Baku in September to prepare a project on capital market development, WB Baku Office said on August 5.
"The preparation of a project initiated by the State Securities Committee of the country is still at an early stage and the WB mission will visit Baku in September to continue the talks," said the office.
WB is considering to approve about $5-10 millions for capital market development in Azerbaijan.
$73 million preferential loan is possible to be provided from the quotas of the International Development Association (part of the WB) for Azerbaijan in 2011 fiscal year to finance this project.
Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco) has approved the first stage of providing funding for the program of modernization of the financial sector in Azerbaijan, the head of the national program of the Swiss Cooperation Office for the South Caucasus Naila Safarova said earlier. Upon Seco procedures, the projects are approved in three stages.
The program includes three projects for further development of the national postal operator Azerpocht, capacity and capital market players and the protection of consumers of financial services.
She said they will be implemented jointly with the World Bank.
The implementation of the capital market development project is scheduled to begin by the end of 2010. Currently, the program First Initiative, funded by various international donor agencies and the World Bank, specifies the design of the project. In general, the State Securities Committee of Azerbaijan has reached an agreement with First Initiative on the financing and technical support in the preparation of strategies of capital market development in Azerbaijan.
In the early stage of negotiations, State Securities Committee asked the WB to provide $1.4 million loan for the creation of a new architecture of the trading system of the Azerbaijani securities market that is part of today's program to modernize the financial sector.
However, according to experts, the implementation of such a large-scale project, which will cover improvement in the trading system of Baku Stock Exchange, National Depository Center, professional securities market participants, the purchase of licensed software, requires a minimum of $4-5 million.
The World Bank has been cooperating with the Azerbaijani government since 1992, when Azerbaijan joined the World Bank. The Bank has financed 52 projects worth $2.7 billion. Today more than $1.5 billion of these funds have been spent.