Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 16
By Anvar Mammadov – Trend:
The Baku Stock Exchange (BSE) intends to start carrying out cross-currency repo (repurchase agreement) transactions in the future, BSE Chairman Vugar Namazov said in an interview with Trend.
He said the BSE is studying this issue.
“If our analyses justify this step and confirm the economic benefits of these instruments, we will work on their implementation,” Namazov said. “We have all the possibilities and legal framework for this.”
He noted that presently manat and US dollar repo transactions are held at the BSE.
Talking about the operations, Namazov noted that the repo market was somewhat more active last year.
“Until last year, we conducted manat repo operations only, but with the release of US dollar bonds of SOCAR last year, we began to carry out US dollar transactions as well,” he said.
According to the BSE, 51 repo transactions worth 51.55 million manats were conducted at the BSE last year. Compared to 2016, the number of transactions increased by more than 25 times.
The total turnover of stock transactions on all instruments at the BSE in 2017 amounted to over 13.6 billion manats, which is 2.4 times more than in 2016.
The state securities market turnover amounted to 6.07 billion manats (7.3-fold growth for the year), corporate securities market turnover - 1.62 billion manats (3.9-fold growth), and the derivatives market turnover - 5.9 billion manats (33.6 percent growth).