Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug.20
By Eldar Janashvili – Trend:
Azerbaijan’s AccessBank has allocated nearly 90 percent of total loans for supporting development of small and medium business (SMB) in the country, First Deputy Chairman of the bank’s Board Evgenia Gashikulina told in an interview with Trend.
According to Gashikulina, by focusing on its key segments, one of which is support for micro-, small and medium-sized business, the bank is now showing quite a lot of flexibility towards its SMB clients in terms of repayment schedules and loan terms.
As the deputy chairman said, the bank is also distinguished by a liberal approach to collateral and combinations of various types of products, taking into account that customers are in conditions of uncertainty and some types of businesses need significant benefits to recover.
Along with it, as she noted, the bank's management actively supports the districts, as it sees a very strong prospect for the development of the agricultural sector in Azerbaijan.
"For this sector, we have domestic agro products, too. We also actively cooperate with the State Agency for Agrarian Credit and Development to provide preferential lending,” she noted. “Moreover, we are now actively working to encourage non-cash flows of SMB and develop lending, within which we plan to return to about 80-85 percent of the volume of loans issued in the previous year.”
She stressed that in order to attract customers for servicing, opening accounts, cards and other services, the bank developed the AccessPartner campaign, a preferential program covering free national transfers, cards, Internet banking and preferential rates for international transfers and salary projects.
“The [COVID-19] pandemic undoubtedly had a very strong impact on the demand for lending and many enterprises completely ceased their activities, falling into strict quarantine measures, while another part of the businesses worked in a limited mode,” Gashikulina said.
“Even sectors that worked without restrictions, such as agriculture and pharmacies, experienced certain problems; businesses faced difficulties with sale of products, movement, so the overall level of demand for bank loans was extremely low,” she added.
The first deputy chairman said that the situation was especially acute in the second half of March and the whole of April, but starting from May, lending began to recover. The volumes of loans issued in May were comparable to the volumes of loans issued in March, while in June more loans were issued than in May.
"Every month, a significant increase over the previous one is recorded. The prospects for the development of lending are now subject to the upcoming demand in the market, measures to be applied in the country, including after August 31, potential mitigation to be provided and new rules to come into force,” she said.
“As for us, we expect that in August and September, the demand will still be limited due to certain restrictions, which are likely to remain, although the volumes of issued loans are expected to be higher than in July. We believe that the last three months of this year will be active months," concluded Gashikulina.
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