BAKU, Azerbaijan, Aug. 31
By Eldar Janashvili - Trend:
The Azerbaijani State Customs Committee at the beginning of the past week (08/24/2020 - 08/28/2020), made amendments to the ‘preferential and simplified rules for the movement of goods by individuals, not intended for production or commercial purposes, across the customs border’, Trend reports referring to the committee.
According to the amendments, the price limit for the import of goods by individuals not intended for commercial purposes was set by the new rules at the level of $800, and the preferential limit for goods not intended for commercial purposes delivered to the country by mail was set at $300.
Another important event in the country’s financial market was the decision by the Baku Commercial Court on the bankruptcy of the insurance company Standard Insurance.
As reported earlier, in May of this year, the monitoring carried out by the Central Bank revealed that the total capital of the insurance company is significantly lower than the required level. For this reason, discussions were held with the company's management. However, shareholders didn’t provide a concrete plan for the full capital recovery of Standard Insurance.
The performance criteria of the company were assessed as extremely low. The issue of behavior in the country's insurance market, especially in the field of consumer protection was repeatedly raised before its management. Given all these aspects, the management of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) decided to abolish the company's license.
Furthermore, in the past week CBA published a statistical bulletin for the first 7 months of this year, according to which Azerbaijani banks issued mortgage loans in the amount of 38.6 million manats ($22.7 million) in July 2020, which is 5 times more compared to July 2019.
CBA also disclosed that the number of problem loans in Azerbaijan as of July 1, 2020, on an annual basis, decreased by 28.6 percent (420.9 million manats, that’s $247.5 million), amounting to 1.06 billion manats ($620 million).
In the past week, the Azerbaijan Credit Bureau (ACB) has commissioned a new credit scoring service to cooperating organizations. The ACB noted that the new credit scoring service will play an important role in simplifying the assessment procedures in credit institutions, saving operating costs, reducing credit risks, and strengthening the financial discipline of the borrower. Through the new service, the behavior of the borrower will be studied based on an analysis of the collected data on credit history in the ACB and individual rating based on the obtained results will be assigned to the borrower.
Besides, in the past week, along with the latest events, Azerbaijan’s Muganbank OJSC presented a new project for entrepreneurs - the Muganbank Finance Hub, which aroused wide interest among the clients. This financial cluster will allow small and medium-sized entrepreneurs to use free services, as well as receive financial support from the bank to cover accounting costs, the bank noted.
In addition to these events, the volume of deposits has increased in Azerbaijan. So, with reference to the report of the Central Bank, the total volume of deposits in the country as of the end of July 2020 amounted to 22.53 billion manats ($13.25 billion), which is 0.7 percent more than the same indicator of last year.
Finally, the past week was marked by fluctuations in oil prices and the continued growth in the exchange rate of euro to manat.