Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 4
By Azad Hasanli – Trend:
The World Bank (WB) and Azerbaijan are discussing the possibilities of decreasing the problem loans in the country’s financial sector, Angela Prigozhina, the bank's private and financial development sector leader, told Trend Nov. 4.
“We are starting the work with Azerbaijani market participants, the Financial Markets Supervision Chamber and the Ministry of Finance to discuss the tasks needed in order to decrease the non-performing loans in the financial sector,” Prigozhina said.
“This problem is currently significantly reducing the interest of the financial sector to issue new loans, which in turn prevents to boost economic growth,” she added.
She said that at the same time, the increasing problem loans lead to aggravation of the situation in the banks and decrease in their profits.
“Therefore, in order to ensure financial stability and bring the norms [of the banking sector] in alignment with international standards, in addition to strengthening the law and regulatory environment, we decided to start working with Azerbaijan’s financial sector and the Financial Markets Supervision Chamber to solve the problem of non-performing loans,” she said.