Akram Hasanov: "Closing Bank Standard, State Saves Money Rather than Confidence in Banking System

Closure of Bank Standard will negatively affect the credibility of the bank system of Azerbaijan, the expert Akram Hasanov said.

In an interview with Turan the banking expert said the Financial Markets Supervision House (FMSH) recognizes this bank is systemically important in the banking sector.

"I believe that by taking the decision to close the bank they chose to preserve the state money rather than confidence in the banking system," Hasanov said.

The expert believes the closure of Bank Standard will also have a negative impact on the devaluation processes.

"The improvement of the bank requires 18 months and the compensation needs 6 months. Now, the investors must be returned AZN 460 million and most of these deposits are in dollars. And those who will be returned the money in manats will naturally buy dollars. All this will have an impact on the growth of demand for foreign currency," he said.

On September 30 FMSH decided to annul Bank Standard.

The volume of bank deposits is 520 million AZN, of which 460 million AZN is insured. From this 460 million AZN, 260 million is deposits in dollars and 38 million AZN is in manats.

The President of the FMSH Board of Directors Rufat Aslanli told reporters that in order to ensure the financial stability a decision was taken on the sale of foreign currency by the Central Bank directly to the Deposit Insurance Fund. --71B