Azernews.Az

By Leman Mammadova

The Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB) may allocate about 80 million euros for projects in Azerbaijan in 2019, Bank's President Dmitry Pankin told Trend.

He mentioned that the relevant projects are already being prepared, saying “the bank has a rather long history of relations with local companies and banks, and now negotiations are also underway with several banks on new financing.”

He also added that this will mainly be the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The Bank earlier reported that it is planning to allocate about 48 million euros for projects in Azerbaijan in 2018.

The Bank’s country strategy for Azerbaijan covering 2019-2022 is currently being prepared.

In 2017, 93.12 million euros were allocated to Azerbaijan, and contracts worth 91.1 million euros were signed. The total number of Bank's operations in Azerbaijan is 39 with the financing in the amount of about 366 million euros.

At present, the authorized capital of the bank is 3.45 billion and the share capital is 2.3 billion euros. Azerbaijan has five percent share capital and is the seventh largest shareholder of 11 member countries.

BSTDB was founded by Azerbaijan, Albania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Armenia, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine and Russia in 1999.

BSTDB supports economic development and regional cooperation, participates in granting loans for projects in the public and private sectors of member countries, opening credit lines, investing in and granting guarantees and trade financing.

Azerbaijan assumed the BSEC chairmanship until December 2018 at the 38th meeting of the Organization's Council of Foreign Ministers, which took place on June 27.

Recently, the 39th meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation member-states took place in Baku under the chairmanship of Azerbaijan.

In general, during Azerbaijan’s chairmanship, four ministerial meetings were held, including a meeting at the level of foreign ministers, 21 thematic meetings of the working group and an ad hoc working group.

The action plans of a number of working groups (tourism, ICT, energy) were adopted. More than 10 meetings of the bodies of the organization, workshops and other events were held. Moreover, the corresponding assessment documents were prepared to improve the efficiency of the organization.

Moreover, during Azerbaijan’s chairmanship, the discussions were underway to complete the work on the project "Regional Trade Facilitation Strategy for the BSEC Region" and the project "BSEC Single Window Cooperation".

After Azerbaijan, the chairmanship will be transferred to Bulgaria.

The Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation is an intergovernmental organization uniting 12 countries of the Black Sea and southern Balkans. The headquarters of the organization is located in Istanbul.

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