Azerbaijan, Baku, March 9 / Trend A.Hasanov /
German development bank KfW is considering increase in the list of agent banks of the German-Azerbaijani Fund (GAF), Fund's Project Manager Edward Schmidt told Trend on Friday.
"The decision on this will be made after the expansion of GAF funding which is expected before the end of 2012. At the same time role of the Fund's agent banks will be revised," Schmidt said.
He noted until the end of the year it is expected that KfW will issue third soft loan worth five million euros for development of small and medium businesses.
"Based on the decision of the Ministry of Finance of Azerbaijan and KfW it is planned to redirect these funds to the GAF's account to increase funding for business," said Schmidt.
The current portfolio of GAF, through which development of the German bank's fund to support small and medium-sized businesses is carried out, reaches 16.7 million euros as of February 1, 2012, while the number of loans is 8828.
The portfolio of the German-Azerbaijani Fund is distributed into eight geographic areas. Some 24.5 percent of the total number of credits fall to Baku, Sumgait - 13 percent, Ganja - 24 percent, Shirvan area - 9.8 percent, Aran area - 9.8 per cent and so on.
Since 1999 the German bank has provided 8,7 million euros to GAF through two tranches. Their development ended, and currently financing banks is carried out from the revolving account and the fund's profit earned by it from the beginning of operations.
GAF partners are Bank of Baku and UniBank (since March, 2001), from January, 2003 - Parabank and Bank Respublika, September, 2004 - DemirBank [formerly Azerdemiryolbank] and AGbank, from December, 2006 - Rabitabank and Mugan Bank, from February, 2007 - bank Nikoil.