Azerbaijan, Baku, Sept. 9 /Trend A.Akhundov /
The Azerbaijani Pasha Bank has already allocated 6.5 million manats to non-bank credit organisations (NBCO) out of an estimated 10 million manats, board member and Chief Financial Administrator of Pasha Bank Shahin Mammadov said at a press conference on Monday.
"In the first half-year we started issuing credits through NBCO and today 1.82 per cent of the bank's credit portfolio accounts for microfinance," Mammadov said.
Pasha Bank started to implement this programme in the spring. Credits are granted for three years at a rate of 14 per cent per annum, without a pledge.
"We believe that with the development of this business rates will be lower and the terms will be longer resulting in the volume of funds increasing. We do not plan to increase the volume of funds by late 2013," chairman of Bank's executive board Farid Akhundov told journalists.
According to him, the bank is very interested in working with the microfinance sector because its network covers a large area and it is represented in a variety of areas including urban where the bank is not represented.
"These microfinance organisations are very deeply involved in agricultural activities and the agriculture sector will have much more importance for us," he said.
Pasha Bank was founded in June 2007. It operates under the Azerbaijani Central Bank's licence No. 250 dated November 28, 2007.
The main goal of the bank is to strengthen the leadership in rendering services to corporate clients, qualitative business growth in priority directions as determined by the strategy, as well as to create and permanently develop long term and reliable relations.
The official exchange rate is 0.7844 AZN/USD on September 9.