BAKU, Azerbaijan, January 25. The total cost of projects submitted to the Entrepreneurship Development Fund under the Ministry of Economy of Azerbaijan amounted to 399.4 million manat ($234.9 million), the fund’s Board Chairman Osman Khaliyev said during a press conference on the results of 2022, Trend reports.
"The main areas of our activity in 2022 were concessional lending, provision of state guarantees and subsidizing current loans," Khaliyev noted.
According to him, 70 percent of loans were issued in the regions.
"Baku accounted for 17 percent, and Absheron - 13 percent," he added.
Besides, according to the official, most of the investment projects covered such sectors as production, processing and agriculture.
In 2022, the Entrepreneurship Development Fund allocated 104.2 million manat ($61.29 million) in concessional loans to 2,710 small and medium-sized projects.
The Azerbaijan Entrepreneurship Development Fund public entity was established by the Decree of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev dated July 31, 2018.
The main objectives of the fund are to improve the support mechanism for entrepreneurship development, create new production and processing enterprises based on innovative technologies in the non-oil sector, ensure the financing of export operations, accelerate investments in the real sector and expand access to financial resources of business units operating in the private sector.