Agricultural lending discussed at Central Bank

06-03-2020

6 March 2020, Baku: Mr Ilham Aliyev, the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan issued assignments on improving access to financial services in regions and rural areas, resolving securitization problems and increasing preferential loans at the meeting dedicated to results of 2019, at the conference dedicated to results of the first year of implementation of the ‘State Program on socio-economic development of regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2019-2023’ and at the meeting on the ‘Results of cotton growing season and actions to be taken in 2020’. To maintain these assignments a meeting was held at the Central Bank with the managers of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Agrarian Credit and Development Agency, the National Confederation of Entrepreneurs Organizations and the Azerbaijan Banks Association on 5 March 2020.

The attendees widely discussed the said issues, and focused on opportunities for access of agricultural entrepreneurs, small agribusinesses in particular to financial services, their benefiting from preferential lending, issuing either unsecured or movable property backed loans, improving real estate backed collateral mechanism, state registration of property rights of agricultural lands, activating secured real estate market and bettering loan guarantee mechanism.

The meeting participants also considered increasing accountability and transparency of agribusinesses, registration of family farms by municipalities, their cooperation, and opportunities for launch of specialized credit unions beginning from the village selected as a pilot.

They also in-depth discussed opportunities for creation of an agrarian bank under best practices, application of possible new financing tools, and expansion of cheque clearing, factoring and leases.

The Central Bank and the Ministry of Agriculture agreed to establish a Project Group to investigate a mechanism to fund agriculture, rural areas and farmers at the end of the meeting.