Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct. 31 / Trend E. Aliyev /
The executive committee of Azerbaijan's first private credit bureau has assessed the technical proposals from those companies wishing to act as technical partners of the bureau, IFC Project Coordinator in Central Asia and Azerbaijan (ACAFI) Teymur Heybatov told Trend on Thursday.
"At today's meeting, the committee considered and discussed the proposals of candidate companies," he added. "The committee members familiarised themselves with the estimates."
According to him, the financial components of the proposals from potential technical partners will be considered over the next few days.
According to the coordinator of the project, the financial proposals will likely be considered by only three of the four companies which submitted applications. This is connected with the fact that one of them failed to overcome the minimum level of evaluating the technical component.
"Afterwards, the shortlist of the two companies will be compiled for a few days," he added. "Then relevant visits will be organised to examine the essence of their proposals."
An international partner will supply the software for the bureau. Going by its own experience, the International Finance Corporation also proposes to give a majority stake in the credit bureau to be established in Azerbaijan, to those who know how to manage it. This will reduce the risks in the work of the bureau and in particular, exclude disputes on certain issues between the banks.
Access Bank, AGBank, Azerbaycan Senaye Bankı, Bank Respublika, Demir Bank, Muganbank, PASA Bank, Turan Bank, Yapı Kredit Bank Azerbaijan and UniBank are potential shareholders of the future credit bureau planned to be established in Azerbaijan.
In 2005, the formation of credit histories of debtors started in Azerbaijan after the establishment of the Central Credit Register Service (CCR) under the Central Bank of Azerbaijan. The register covers the whole spectrum of personal data about banks, non-bank credit institutions, debtors, owners of large stock packages of participation in debtors' capital, their credits and pledges on them. The credit bureau, in turn will be able to collect credit information from other financial institutions such as leasing companies, organisations involved in micro-crediting, non-financial organisations, including communal and telecommunications companies and trading by selling goods on credit.
The objective of ACAFI project is the improvement of the infrastructure of Financial Markets in Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) and Azerbaijan by creating an effective system of credit information exchange and introduction of training and certification in the field of risk management among employees of the financial institutions.
The project's activities will help financial institutions take quicker and correct credit decisions and thereby increase the availability of financial services to individual consumers as well as small and medium enterprises in the region. This three-year project is being implemented with the cooperation of the Swiss government.
