Baku, Azerbaijan, April 10
By Emin Aliyev - Trend
Azerbaijani AccessBank's foreign borrowing portfolio reached $ 450 million as of the first quarter of 2014, AccessBank chairman of board Michael Hoffmann told the media on April 9.
"An agreement on allocating a syndicated loan worth $ 60 million was the first this year," he said.
AccessBank signed an agreement on allocating a loan to finance the activity of the bank in the current year with a syndicate consisting of 17 banks representing Central and Eastern Europe, CIS, Asia and the Middle East.
"The bank is cautious in attracting foreign loans," deputy chairman of the bank Anar Hasanov said.
"We follow the ratio between external borrowing and deposit base volumes set by the internal rules of the bank," Hasanov said. "The control for its observance is a part of AccessBank's prudential policy."
"The bank is satisfied with the amount and quality of the deposit portfolio," he said.
"The volume of the bank's deposit base is about $ 350 million," he said. "Moreover, we offer deposits at the rates lower than the average and the number of depositors and deposit amounts continue increasing for several months. This can be regarded as trust. More than 70 percent of the bank's deposits are placed in manat and only about 30 percent - in freely convertible currency."
"This practice was incredible few years ago," he said. "The prevalence of deposits in national currency is direct evidence that manat is really stable and citizens trust the national currency."
AccessBank was founded in 2002 by BSTDB, EBRD, IFC, KfW, the German consulting company LFS Financial Systems (LFS) and Access Holding.
The bank concentrates on lending to small and medium businesses. It has a wide branch network through Azerbaijan and employs 1,931 people. AccessBank is rated BB+ by Fitch Ratings, the highest rating among the Azerbaijani banks.
Translated by NH
Edited by CN
