BAKU, Azerbaijan, September 16. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) seeks to partner with more banks to boost the support for small and medium-sized enterprises in Azerbaijan, Elisabetta Falcetti, EBRD Managing Director for Türkiye and the Caucasus said in an exclusive interview with Trend.
"I was really pleased that when I arrived we were able to engage with AcessBank, a partner bank, and with whom we have signed a risk sharing partnership agreement which is an important instrument, because by risk sharing 50 percent of any sort of lending to SMEs by AccessBank, we will be able to have multiplier effects, so increase access to finance for SMEs who want to grow, become more competitive, but and lack funding. For me this is one of the new products that we are deploying here in Azerbaijan. We would like other banks to follow the suit. I definitely hope so, given the process of restructuring of participating banks that we work with in the country," said the managing director.
Falcetti believes that there may be other opportunities to increase the number of financial institutions that the EBRD works with in Azerbaijan to deploy its standard facilities.
"RSF, the risk-sharing facility, is a very effective instrument, because it allows us to reach SMEs at scale rather than doing direct lending to SMEs, which can be costly and time consuming for an IFI like the EBRD. Secondly, we have a strong advisory for small businesses team (ASB team) based here in Azerbaijan. Their role is to work with SMEs on the demand side. RSF tackles the supply of credit to SMEs, the ASB looks at the demand and tries to work with SMEs directly, providing advisory support to strengthen their capacity so that they become eligible customers for banks. As part of our ASB program we have a number of products that we could deploy here, should there be interest and demand, targeting, for example women-led SMEs or youth entrepreneurs. We have the Star Venture program that is already deployed here," she said.
The managing director pointed out that the Bank has a number of instruments and tools that it can deploy to support SMEs.
"But of course, we need to have counterparts that are up to certain minimum requirements in terms of transparency, reporting, having accounts that can be audited and so forth," Falcetti added.
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