BSTDB president talks about possibility of further issuing manat bonds (Exclusive)

The Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB) can further issue bonds in Azerbaijani manats if there is a possibility of using the national currency for financing any project in the country, BSTDB President Dmitry Pankin said in an exclusive interview with Trend.

"The main issue for us is to find interesting projects, which we will finance in Azerbaijan. Accordingly, if we have projects, we will need to solve the issue related to the sources of financing. That’s to say, up until now, we were primarily using dollars or euros for financing projects. Currently, we see that there is an opportunity to attract money on the local market and this is a new situation for us. We will firstly chose projects on which we will work and then look into the possibility of using the national currency for financing the projects. If there is such an opportunity, we will continue to issue bonds in Azerbaijani manats," he said.

Talking about the demand for BSTDB’s manat bonds, Pankin said that the expectations from those bonds were not so high.

"We were surprised. We didn’t expect such a result. We saw that there is a demand and there is an interest on the market. But what is especially important is that these bonds can be used for refinancing through the Central Bank of Azerbaijan, which of course significantly supported the demand. We were the first international bank to issue bonds in manats, maybe because we have experience in this region. We have issued some bonds for example, in Georgia. We know how it works," he said.

The Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB), an international financial institution with headquarters in Thessaloniki, Greece, was established by Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. BSTDB started operations in June 1999 and has authorized capital of 3.45 billion euros. The Bank supports economic development and regional cooperation in the Black Sea Region through trade and project finance lending, guarantees, and equity participation in private enterprises and public entities in the member countries. BSTDB is rated A-/A-2 by Standard & Poor’s, and A2/P1 by Moody's.

BSTDB became the first international financial institution to issue bonds in Azerbaijani manats.