Finance

Finance

Commercial banksâ€™ external assets more than doubles in Azerbaijan

12 March 2009 12:56 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Vahab Rzayev â€“ APA-Economics. As of February 1, total foreign assets of Azerbaijan-based commercial banks stood at AZN 263.7 million, a 2.1 times year-on-year increase on a year earlier.
At the same time, the banksâ€™ total external assets grew by 7.1% or AZN 84 million in January, said the National Bank of Azerbaijan.
The increase in January exceeds 2008 average monthly growth (AZN 56.3 million) in total foreign assets by 1.5 times.
The growth in commercial banksâ€™ total external assets has become commonplace in recent years, as the growth was 14% in 2006, 66% in 2007 and 2.3 times in 2008.
This shows an increase in the investment including direct and portfolio investment pumped abroad.
Besides, there is a rise in foreign liabilities as we have seen negative balance of foreign capital since 2006.

* Year-end statistics

As of February 1, the negative balance of foreign capital grew to AZN 771 million, accounting for 61% of foreign assets. This is directly due to the sharp increase in banksâ€™ foreign liabilities. As shown in the table, commercial banksâ€™ external assets grew by 3.6 times and external liabilities by 23.4 times over the past 8 years.