Azerbaijan, Baku, Sept. 20 / Trend E. Aliyev /
Four foreign companies from Singapore, Iceland, Germany and Turkey have submitted their bids for participation in the first private credit bureau in Azerbaijan as a technical partner, IFC Project Coordinator in Central Asia and Azerbaijan (ACAFI) Teymur Heybatov told Trend on Thursday.
"The technical bids from four out of eight companies that have voiced their willingness for participation and sent the documents in time were opened at a meeting of the executive committee for the establishment of the first private credit bureau," he said. "The committee members examined their content. They will evaluate these bids on a variety of criteria."
According to him, the financial bids of the candidates were not considered during the meeting.
"They will be opened after the technical proposals are examined and evaluated by the committee members," he said. "This decision was taken for the financial component of technical partnership bids so as not to affect the evaluation of the criteria. Financial bids will be opened at the next meeting of the committee. The evaluation of technical bids will be voiced there."
The next meeting of the executive committee will be held on October 30, he added.
An international partner will supply the software for the bureau. Going by its own experience, the International Finance Corporation also proposes to give a majority stake in the credit bureau to be established in Azerbaijan, to those who know how to manage it. This will reduce the risks in the work of the bureau and in particular, exclude disputes on certain issues between the banks.
Access Bank, AGBank, Azerbaycan Senaye Bankı, Bank Respublika, Demir Bank, Muganbank, PASA Bank, Turan Bank, Yapı Kredit Bank Azerbaijan and UniBank are potential shareholders of the future credit bureau planned to be established in Azerbaijan.
In 2005, the formation of credit histories of debtors started in Azerbaijan after the establishment of the Central Credit Register Service (CCR) under the Central Bank of Azerbaijan. The register covers the whole spectrum of personal data about banks, non-bank credit institutions, debtors, owners of large stock packages of participation in debtors' capital, their credits and pledges on them. The credit bureau, in turn will be able to collect credit information from other financial institutions such as leasing companies, organisations involved in micro-crediting, non-financial organisations, including communal and telecommunications companies and trading by selling goods on credit.
The objective of ACAFI project is the improvement of the infrastructure of Financial Markets in Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) and Azerbaijan by creating an effective system of credit information exchange and introduction of training and certification in the field of risk management among employees of the financial institutions.
The project activities will help financial institutions take quicker and correct credit decisions and thereby increase the availability of financial services to individual consumers as well as small and medium enterprises in the region. This three-year project is being implemented with the cooperation of the Swiss government.