Banks of Uzbekistan have embarked on implementation of one of primary tasks for today – broad crediting and involvement of the population in entrepreneurial activity.
Last December, speaking at a joint meeting of bоth chambers of Parliament, President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev noted that commercial banks now have to change their way of working. The state’s leader set a specific goal before the financial institutions: they should create optimal conditions for citizens to get down to entrepreneurship through the dialogue with each family.
To fulfill the task, the workers of the country’s largest credit institution – Agrobank – intend to visit some 1.3 million homes in 813 settlements. The bank even opened a special division for this purpose. Similar divisions were opened in bank offices in Karakalpakstan, regions and 176 branches.
Visiting families, bank representatives conduct interviews, provide details on the opportunities to start a business, take measures on short term loaning. To date, new departments and divisions of Agrobank have already hired 576 qualified specialists. In order to improve the quality of the ongoing program, the bank additionally employed over two thousand skilled workers.
The availability of such an army of officers has contributed to the first results of the large-scale campaign. The bank’s associates have already visited nearly 360,000 houses, informed about the credits allocated for starting business, and the terms of obtaining. Those who took interest in getting the funds were offered standard business projects. Besides, experts provide assistance in processing all papers.
Mailout of registered letters with specific questionnaires is another common way of banks to draw citizens’ interest to entrepreneurship. Virtually all financial institutions of the country have resorted to this method today. Over 890,000 families have already received such letters from Agrobank alone.
Given its specifics, the bank offers favorable loans for horticulture, greenhouse farming, crafts, service development in rural areas.
Figures:
In 2016, Agrobank provided diversified farmers with 294.7 billion soums of loans. Of these, 14.9 billion soums was allocated for the establishment of livestock farms, 856 million soums – for poultry, 381 million soums – for fish farming, 6.1 billion soums – for greenhouses. Consumer loans amounted to 82.2 billion soums.
