Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 2
By Emin Aliyev -Trend:
The companies winners of the tender to select a technical partner for the first private credit bureau in Azerbaijan will hold a presentation of the technical part of their proposals, IFC Project Coordinator in Central Asia and Azerbaijan (ACAFI) Teymur Heybatov told Trend on Dec.2.
"According to the tender results, a shortlist has included two companies including Italian CRIF and Icelandic Creditinfo. Both will hold presentation of the technical part of their proposals, and explain the validity of the choice of equipment and other aspects, in Baku on December 17-18," Heybatov said.
"Today the organising committee will receive written answers to questions of interest from the winning companies," according to Heybatov.
"The committee is interested in certain aspects of the deployment of the necessary infrastructure required for the implementation of credit bureau activities," Heybatov stressed.
A further step envisages a visit by representatives of the organising committee, who will review the proposed solutions from candidates, IFC spokesman said.
"After the review, contract negotiations will start at the sites. This will take place in the first quarter of 2014," Heybatov said.
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's 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.