UniBank has financed as many as 18 production, trade and service projects with the SE (small enterprising) support credit line from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to date. The loans on-lent so far have amounted to $373 thousand, the bank told Trend.
The agreement governing on-lending of the credit line was signed on 19 December 2005. The credit line envisaged equals $2 mn in the aggregate and is employed to finance projects in the two major fields of activity, namely, micro-projects and SE projects. It is intended to on-lend $1 mn in each field.
UniBank has a long history of successful co-operation with the EBRD. Counting the above-mentioned facility in, UniBank is in receipt of five EBRD credit lines. In 2002, the Bank was awarded an SE credit line in the amount of $1.5 mn, the amount of which was doubled in 2003. In addition, the Bank is in receipt of a trade finance credit line from the EBRD; this facility equals $1.5 mn. The EBRD was one of the participants of the loan syndicate that resulting in UniBanks receipt of $5 mn; the share of the EBRD in the syndication equalled $1.5 mn. In 2005, the EBRD awarded UniBank a co-finance credit line (towards co-financing major projects costing over $1 mn) in the total amount of $5 mn. UniBank is anticipating investment of $5 mn of its own funds in the format of this project, while the total allocation for it will equal $10 mn.
Apart from that, UniBank was declared the most actively developing bank within the frameworks of the EBRD Trade Facilitation Programme in Azerbaijan in 2003; the nomination was awarded at the EBRD Annual Meeting. Furthermore, the highly-reputed international financial magazine The Banker put UniBank in the top ten of the fifty fastest-growing banks in the EBRD Countries of Operations.