Baku, Azerbaijan, March 3
By Emin Aliyev - Trend:
The non-bank credit organization 'Aqrarkredit' intends to increase the volume of its micro-loans portfolio to 35 million manats by late 2014, deputy chairman of Aqrarkredit's board, Suleyman Kalyashev told Trend on March 3.
"Aqrarkredit's authorized capital stands at 18.6 million manats. Moreover, we are working to attract additional financial resources from local banks in order to expand lending volumes," Kalyashev said.
The credit organization's assets in late 2013 amounted to about 31 million manats.
Aqrarkredit's management hopes that the organization's status will change and it will become a bank.
The expert believes that the desire of large non-bank credit organizations to develop, as well as their request for a full banking license is understandable and normal.
"We applied for a banking license quite long ago and hope to receive it. Possibly the delay in this issue is due to the desire of Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) to protect the country's financial system from possible shocks and preserve its stability. Azerbaijan has 43 banks, the market's density is very high," Kalyashev said. "The regulator is interested in finding large banks with a significant capital - evidence for this was the decision to raise minimum capital requirements for banks by five times, from 10 million manats to 50 million manats. However, this process should go smoothly and gradually, so the deadline for fulfilling this decision has been moved till the end of this year".
Agrarkredit's main shareholder is Azerbaijani Finance Ministry, which owns 99.9 percent of the credit organization, and other shares are equally distributed among the Azersigorta state insurance organization and Irrigation and Water Management JSC.
The official exchange rate on March 3 is 0.7844 AZN/USD.
Translated by E.A.