Azernews.Az

Friday March 29 2024

EU, EBRD continue supporting agriculture in Azerbaijan

26 November 2015 16:55 (UTC+04:00)
EU, EBRD continue supporting agriculture in Azerbaijan

By Nigar Orujova

The European Union will continue to support the rural livelihoods and economic diversification in Azerbaijan in the future, Malena Mard, the EU Ambassador to Azerbaijan said at a joint EU and EBRD workshop “Azerbaijan Agricultural Finance Facility” in Baku on November 26.

“The EU has been a key donor in agricultural and rural development in Azerbaijan for two decades,” she noted. “Access to finance has been identified as one of the key challenges for agricultural producers and food processors and the new Agricultural Finance Facility will make an important contribution to overcome this challenge.”

The joint event is aimed at facilitating the synergies for the success of the recently launched Azerbaijan Agricultural Finance Facility (AZAFF) as well as providing a review of the current challenges faced by Azerbaijani farmers in terms of financing and advisory.

The EU and the EBRD have been involved in several initiatives aimed at supporting rural and regional development in Azerbaijan over the past few years, targeting specifically the development of the agricultural sector in the country.

Presenting the EBRD’s new strategy focus in the field of financial institutions and agribusinesses, Head of EBRD Office in Baku Neil McKain said AZAFF is the first comprehensive approach in Azerbaijan combining specialized EBRD financing for agricultural MSMEs with a risk sharing mechanism, and technical assistance to both partner financial institutions and agricultural sub-borrowers.

“The overall objective is to support the development of the agricultural sector in Azerbaijan by facilitating access to finance and business development services for agricultural enterprises and to help local banks diversify loan portfolios and increase their regional presence,” he said.

The event was hosted by the Programme’s technical consultancy partner, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. Christophe Cordonnier, Frankfurt School’s Senior Agronomist and AZAFF Team Leader delivered a presentation on transforming the oil crisis into an opportunity and the specifics of competitive agriculture and economic diversification in Azerbaijan.

The second part of the workshop was designed for the benefit of the local partner financial institutions as well as farmers and agribusinesses in Azerbaijan.

The programme's Project Manager and Agri-finance Expert Erdal Kocoglu presented AZAFF technical assistance approach and introduced an innovative agri-credit scoring system, ALES, which was used in EBRD's other programmes in Turkey and Tajikistan with great success. ALES is currently being adapted to the Azerbaijani agriculture sector and soon will be made available to AZAFF partner financial institutions.

The EBRD, with the support of the EU, is implementing the AZAFF, a financing facility up to $40 million to encourage local financial institutions to increase lending to farmers and other entities in the agricultural sector, since September 2015.

AZAFF combines the EBRD's traditional approach to channel financing to ultimate beneficiaries through banks with the provision of non-financial assistance in order to increase the direct impact of financing and foster the overall economic development of the agriculture sector in Azerbaijan.

Loading...
Latest See more