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Azeri Post targets 20-25% market share in financial and banking services

13 October 2009 16:12 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Aynur Veliyeva - APA-ECONOMICS. Azeri Post intends to take a 20-25% market share in the financial and banking services in Azerbaijan in 3 years, said Novruz Mammadov, head of the postal sector at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies.

According to him, the advantage of Azeri Post lies in the fact that it will have lower costs for the delivery of services because it already has country-wide network, employees and service points.

He added that the company will rely 60% on income from banking services in the near future.

The project is believed to help Azeri Post cut costs through the use of its resources and boost profit through the provision of financial services, like money transfers.
Financial Services Development Project between the Government of Azerbaijan and the World Bank aims to facilitate improvement of the access of the rural population to financial services and improvements in the financial architecture and a component for Azeri Post to build the financial service capacity in rural areas that are presently undeserved or not served by the banking system and to improve access to basic business infrastructure and for delivery of Government services.
The cost of the project is $17.5 million, of which $12.5 million will be allocated by the World Bank and $5mln by the Government of Azerbaijan. The project will be complete by the end of 2008.
Azerbaijan has about 1,600 post points, of which about 1,400 are post offices and the rest are post agents.
By early 2009, 1200 post points are expected to make available financial services.