Finance

Finance

Azerbaijan Central Bank offers concessions to small banks for increasing capital

15 November 2013 09:34 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Vahab Rzayev – APA-Economics. The Management Board of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan held a meeting yesterday and passed a decision according to which the commercial banks operating in the country are to increase their minimum total capital to AZN 50m by the end of 2013, said chairman of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan Elman Rustamov, APA-Economics reports.

Elman Rustamov said the banks that cover 95% of the assets of country’s banking sector either have already increase their capital to AZN 50m, or will reach it in the short run. Taking this into account, the Central Bank of Azerbaijan passed a decision according to which the rest of the banks will increase their capital to AZN 50m by the end of 2014. The major reason of this decision is that the goal of increasing capitalization of banks in Azerbaijan has been reached. Elman Rustamov said the state is not going to remove the other small banks from the market through administrative way and cause uncertainty in the market.

Elman Rustamov added that due to the decision to increase the minimum capital to AZN 50m, capitalization in the banking sector increased by 48%, 8 banks have capital of more than AZN 100m. Elman Rustamov also said that the Central Bank of Azerbaijan has developed a working plan regarding the other banks and hopes that these banks will either increase their capital in 2014, or solve the problem through consolidation.