KULOB, April 16, 2009, Asia-Plus — Over the first three months of this year, branches of banks and microcredit lenders in Khatlon’s Kulob region have provided only 16,051,152 somoni in loans to local enterprises, farmers and entrepreneurs, which is more than 2.5 times fewer than in the same period of 2008, Abdukarim Nematov, the head of the branch of the National Bank of Tajikistan (NBT) in Kulob, told Asia-Plus on Thursday.
According to him, one of the main reasons for that is delays in repayment of loans. “As of April 1, 2009, 17,474 borrowers have not repaid 95,628,684 somoni to local banks and microcredit lenders,” Nematov said.
On the process of repayment of last year’s cotton loans, he said the government last year gave 27,471,796 somoni to local cotton-growing farms through banks but they have repaid only 12,130,606 by April 10. Besides, banks provided 12,564,483 somoni of their own funds to cotton farmers last year and they have repaid only 4,594,707 somoni, Nematov said.
