Thessaloniki, Greece, Aug.27
By Leman Zeynalova - Trend:
The Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB) plans important changes in its business model for coming years, BSTDB President Dmitry Pankin said answering Trend’s questions during the media relationship even titled “Black Sea Region in Post Pandemic: Strategic Dialogue with BSTDB Senior Management” in Greece.
“Last year, our clients didn’t need long-term financing, didn’t need infrastructure financing from our financial institution, they needed support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Short-term change in our business model: we are focusing on more support to SMEs in countries like Romania, Bulgaria, Greece. In that case, we cannot, of course, deal directly with the clients, we will look for a financial institution, which will act as an intermediate. This is the case for 2020-2021,” he said.
“When we talk about long-term strategy, we need more role as a project organizer, i.e. starting the project, analyzing it, preparing the project for financing by other institutions. This will be one of the biggest changes in our business model.
We have strong demand from our shareholders for trade financing. We can provide some counter-guarantee for a commercial bank that will have trade operations in our member country. We also have high demand from shareholders for environmental projects and we will be more active in this sphere in coming years,” added Pankin.