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Azeri Post might be licensed in a month for financial services

26 January 2009 09:33 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Aynur Veliyeva â€“ APA-Economics. Azeri Post, an arm of the Communications and Information Technologies Ministry of Azerbaijan, is due to get a license for financial services within the first quarter as part of the Financial Services Development Project between the World Bank and the Government of Azerbaijan.
The ministry said Azeri Post will be able to work at profit after 2010 and is expected to get a 20% rise in profit in 2011.
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.