Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct. 8 / Trend A. Akhundov /
Azerbaijani banks are interested in the development of capital markets in the country, Director General of the Azerbaijani Central Bank (CBA) Rashad Orujov told Trend on Saturday.
"The banks are active participants in the capital markets," he said. "In many cases, professional participants of the market are the banks' subsidiaries. A major part of corporate operations falls to the banks, which act as active investors in this market and are interested in its development."
He said that the Azerbaijani financial sector has significantly increased recently, and the turnover of capital markets has increased six-fold over the past five years.
"Earlier the banks mainly gave loans and received deposits," he said. "But at present, the banks move away from their traditional areas and expand their activity."
Universal banking has both positive and negative features.
"Universal banks can finance larger projects, have a wide network of services, more resources," he said. "At the same time, this model can have risky sides, for example, while transferring the investors' resources to speculative operations. A probability of these risks is high in the early stages of market development. Moreover, taking into account the high growth of universal banks, they can influence the competition and create systemic risks."
Around 43 banks operate in Azerbaijan.
