Azerbaijan, Baku / Trend corr I. Khalilova / National Bank of Azerbaijan (NBA) has plans to make changes by the end of 2007 to its register in order to cut processing time and to decrease bureaucracy in the Centralized Credit Register (CCR) functioning at the NBA, the Director of Statistics and Research Department of the NBA, Emin Huseynov, reported on 21 August.
Afterwards the NBA will proceed with negotiations with international organizations to attract financial assistance to further improve the CCR.
Under a new project by the World Bank (WB) on modernization of the financial sector of Azerbaijan the NBA is already applying the second stage of development of the credit register to the project. The direction of the cooperation program of the NBA is with the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The agency has already financed the visit of a consultant for a diagnostic review and definition of further ways to develop the credit register. The recommendations of the consultant have been discussed and the NBA hopes for further cooperation.
According to the NBA, within 1/5-2 years the CCR will be ready for the efficient institutional development of the NBA. The strategy of the NBA has very important directions for the potential of the register. Today it involves only banks, but in the future postal banks, non-bank credit organizations, micro credit organizations and leasing companies can be involved.
The CCR was established in March 2005 within the framework of a WB project on 'Technical Assistance to Financial Sector of Azerbaijan'. The credit register is one of the banks credit risk management tools.