German-Azerbaijani Fund's activity might be expanded

According to the head of KFW Baku office, Natik Abdullayev, there are plans to open a number of branch offices of the fund in Guba and Lenkaran considering the expansion of GAF activities this year. Up to this time there was only one branch office of the fund acting in Ganja, though it is major priority was credit granting to small and medium business.

According to Abullayev, financing possibility for the agricultural production via GAF is being studied on the example of banks and non-bank credit organizations, Trend informs.

Agricultural financing may begin soon after the arrival of the third installment for GAF in the amount of ?20m. In this case, a necessity appears to expand the number of GAF agent-banks, in order to cover the regions. Abdullayev considers this possible, as some of the GAF agent-banks, that are active since 2000, do not need consulting anymore; they can give out credits independently.

German bank has granted GAF two trenches since 1999 with total amount of $8.7m Their development was terminated and now financing is conducted via the revolver accounts. Since the fund foundation, credit portfolio of GAF was made up of ?34m with 5700 credits in 2000, more than 80% of which were allocated during the last 2 years. According to the size and amount of credits 40 % of them were made in 2004.

Bank of Baku and UniBank became partners of GAF in March 2001, Parabank and Bank Respublika in January 2003, Azerdemiryolbank and Azerigazbank in September 2004.