Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 22
By Azad Hasanli – Trend:
The non-banking credit organization (NBCO) “Finance for Development,” founded by the UK’s Oxfam international confederation of charitable organizations, plans to significantly increase lending in Azerbaijan, Jalal Aliyev, chairman of the board of the NBCO, told Trend.
He said that, currently, the management of the NBCO is working on a new development strategy, which will cover the period of 2018-2020.
“Within the frames of the new strategy, we will focus our attention on Azerbaijan’s districts, in particular on small farms, because they often lack the necessary funds,” he added.
The Finance for Development NBCO, which has been engaged in lending to low-income families for 14 years, has recently issued loans of 20,000-40,000 manats on a monthly basis, he said.
Since June of this year, the NBCO has increased the volume of monthly loans to 150,000 manats, he noted.
“By the end of 2017, we want to bring this figure to 400,000-500,000 manats per month,” Aliyev said.
In 2015, after the February devaluation of the manat in Azerbaijan, banks and NBCO began to gradually reduce their loan portfolios. The NBCO was stabilizing its loan portfolio in this period, and was increasing the loan repayment ratio in 2016, as well as the first half of 2017.
“Now we are ready to increase lending to Azerbaijan’s districts by helping farmers and farm employees to gain access to the funds,” he added.