Azerbaijan, Baku, Nov. 2 / Trend N. Ismayilova /
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) will evaluate Azerbaijan's financial sector within the Financial Sector Assessment Programme (FSAP) in the second half of 2012, head of IMF mission in the country, deputy director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department Nadeem Ilahi told media on Wednesday.
"The Azerbaijani government appealed to the IMF to conduct its assessment within the FSAP," he said. "The preparations for the assessment will begin early next year."
He said that this is quite a time consuming process and the state bodies will have to work hard and fill in a number of forms.
"We assume that the evaluation will be conducted in the second half of 2012," he said.
The IMF and World Bank conducted the first evaluation within this programme in 2003. After the first evaluation, the laws for banks, the National Bank and several regulations were adopted. The adoption of these laws eliminated deficiencies identified in the FSAP assessment on the first round.
The WB and IMF experts conducted stress tests within the Azerbaijani financial sector assessment programme and found they revealed a high capacity of the banking system to withstand the risks to reduce the total indices. They showed that if the indices reduce by 50-70 per cent, the banking system will not fall to a zero level and its assets will exceed liabilities. This is a very good index.