Baku, Azerbaijan, May 2
By Emin Aliyev - Trend:
The organizing committee for the establishment of the first private credit bureau in Azerbaijan is taking actions to accelerate the process, Coordinator of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) project on strengthening the financial infrastructure in Central Asia and Azerbaijan Teymur Heybatov told Trend on May 1.
"We submitted the information and the founding documents of the two companies CRIF (Italy) and Creditinfo (Iceland) to the Central Bank of Azerbaijan," he added. "These companies won the relevant tender for rendering the technical partnership services. The country's Ministry of Communication and High Technologies must register the database of the bureau. They will have to get a positive response from the Central Bank."
He added that the bureau will be established by late 2014.
A technical partner will get a controlling stake (51 percent of the equity) in the bureau.
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, organizations involved in micro-crediting, non-financial organizations, 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.
Translated by NH
Edited by CN