USAID and Central Bank of Azerbaijan joint workshop addresses problem loans portfolio

USAID and the Central Bank raise awareness on the risk posed by non-performing loans
USAID and the Central Bank raise awareness on the risk posed by non-performing loans
Vugar Naghiyev/USAID

For Immediate Release

Thursday, September 27, 2012

On September 27, 2012 the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), jointly with the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBAR) held a one day “Problem Loan Management” workshop for representatives of the local banking community to raise awareness among the private sector and bank regulators regarding the risks posed by non-performing loans and the methods by which these risks can be managed.

Non-performing or questionable loans that private banks have either failed to identify, failed to acknowledge, or failed to act on can render a banking system vulnerable to shocks or underperformance. This is a problem shared with banking systems in other countries in the region.

The workshop, co-financed by USAID and the CBAR, focused on how to identify problem loans within a bank’s portfolio and the actions to take in order to minimize losses and future risks – a topic particularly relevant under current circumstances. Loan portfolios in banks in the region are at risk of deterioration due to the lingering after-effects of the global economic crisis, the depressed prices of various commodities, and a European financial crisis that still remains unresolved.

In particular, the workshop explored the four major components of problem loan management: Problem Loan Detection, Problem Loan Situation Evaluation, Problem Loan Negotiation, and Loan Resolution.

The workshop was innovative as it looked at problem loan management from the perspective of both private banks and bank regulators. Senior level bank supervisors from the CBAR as well as private banks from Azerbaijan and from the National Bank of Kazakhstan and other countries in the region actively participated in the discussions.

The workshop was facilitated by a team of banking experts from the USAID funded “Partners for Financial Stability” regional project (see www.pfsprogram.org) and organized by the USAID/Azerbaijan Competitiveness and Trade Project.

For the past several years, USAID/Azerbaijan and the Central Bank of Azerbaijan have worked closely to improve the latter’s capacity and performance in a wide variety of areas.