DUSHANBE, March 30, 2009, Asia-Plus — According to the Ministry of Finance (MoF), banks have repaid only little more than 40 million somoni of the government cotton loan.
In 2008, the government gave a 140 million somoni credit to Agroinvestbonk, Amonatbonk (Tajikistan’s savings bank), Orienbonk, Tajik Sodirot Bonk (TSB) and TajPromBank to provide loans to cotton farmers and only 28.6 percent of that has been repaid to this date, Narzullo Habibuloyev, the head of the budget department within a MoF, said in an interview with Asia-Plus. He added that those little more than 40 million somoni had been repaid by four banks, while no somoni had been repaid by Orienbonk so far.
In the meantime, according to information received from Agroinvestbonk, Amonatbonk, TSB, and TajPromBank, they have repaid totaling more than 46 million somoni so far.
Agroinvestbonk’s head office in Dushanbe said they had received 50 million somoni from the government last year and they had repaid more than 14 million somoni.
Representative from Amonatbonk says they received 40 million somoni from the government and have repaid 20 million somoni so far.
According to TSB’s head office in Dushanbe, the bank last year received 10 million somoni from the government and they have already paid off the government credit.
Chairman of the board of TajPromBank, Jamshed Ziyoyev, told Asia-Plus today that they received 5 million somoni from the government last year. The bank has repaid 2.1 million somoni to this date, Ziyoyev said.
Asia-Plus has failed to get any information about the government loan repayment from Orienbonk that received 35 million somoni from the government for lending last year’s cotton sowing and harvesting campaign.
As it had been reported earlier, Agroinvestbonk asked the government in early March to postpone debt repayments for Tajik farmers until the end of the year or farmers and local banks will be bankrupt. The bank justified its request by saying that the fall in the international price of cotton and in demand for the product has hurt many Tajik farmers. Jalil Tavakkalov, an official with Agroinvestbonk, told Asia-Plus that time that most farmers will not be able to repay their loans until the end of the year, but if they don”t the bank could seize their property.
Last year, the government provided the loan to the mentioned banks at 12 annual interest and the loans should be paid off by April 1.
