National Bank of Azerbaijan (NBA) has made a decision to decrease the rate and norms of obligatory reservation on external and banking commitments.

Mediamax reports referring Trend that the Deputy Chairman of NBA Board of Directors Rufat Aslanli noted that the given decision will contribute to stirring up the credit policy of the country’s banking sector.

“We hope that this will affect the decrease of credit interest rates as well”, Aslanli stated.

On October 31, by the decision of NBA Board of Directors, the refinancing rate was cut down from 12% to 10%, the upper limit of the interest corridor was cut down from 17% to 15%, and the lower limit – from 3% to 1%.

On November 3, the norms of obligatory reservation on banking commitments were cut down from 12% to 9%, and the norm of obligatory reservation on external commitments – from 5% to 0%.

“The decrease of reservation norms will introduce additional liquidity at the volume of 220mln manats to the banking sector”, Aslanli stated. According to him, additional resources will expand the banks’ capacities, which, under the influence of the global financial crisis, have been experiencing problems with attracting borrowings and have cut down the crediting volumes, and certain banks completely ceased issue of consumer and mortgage credits.