Finance

Home page

Finance

Selection of pilot organizations for Azerbaijan Corporate Governance Project 2 to be complete this year

07 October 2008 13:36 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Nijat Mustafayev-APA-Economics. IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, partnered with the Swiss Confederationâ€™s State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) announced that the selection of pilot organizations for the second phase of the Azerbaijan Corporate Governance Project will be completed by early next year, said Aliya Azimova, the IFC Officer in Azerbaijan.
She added that there is no fixed date for the completion of the selection but the completion is expected by the end of this year or early next year.
IFC will work with companies and banks to further improve their corporate governance practices and minimize their portfolio risk.
Six pilot organizations will be selected for the project that will give priority to banks and joint stock companies.
Phase 2 is not free and $4 million will be allocated for this stage.
Azerbaijan Investment Company and Ministry of Economic Development are the country partners of the project.
The project is jointly undertaken by IFC and SECO.
Azerbaijan became a member of IFC in 1996. To date, IFC has invested $266 million from its own funds and $104 million from syndications in 37 projects in the country and has implemented advisory projects in banking, corporate governance, leasing, SME development, housing finance, securities market development, investment promotion, and business environment.
The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs is the Swiss Confederationâ€™s competence center for all the core issues related to economic policy. Its aim is to create basic regulatory and economic policy conditions to enable business to flourish and benefit all. SECO also represents Switzerland in the large multilateral trade organizations and international negotiations, and is involved in efforts to reduce poverty and help developing countries with transition economies build sustainable democratic societies and viable market economies. Each year, Switzerland spends about 1.9 billion francs on development cooperation and transition assistance to countries.