DUSHANBE, October 2, Asia-Plus – Kazkomertsbank, Kazakhstan’s largest correspondent bank, has opened its representative office in Tajikistan.
A source in the National Bank of Tajikistan (NBT) said that the Tajik central bank Friday [September 29] considered application of Kazkomertsbank for opening its representation in Tajikistan and approved it.
The NBT source said that the bank’s representative office will not offer an assortment of products and services in Tajikistan as it planned before, “because it is outside competence of the representative offices.” “The Kazkomertsbank representative office in Dushanbe will study banking environment in Tajikistan and collect statistical data and send them to the bank’s headquarters in Kazakhstan,” said the source, “Besides, in the case of necessity it may arrange meetings of representatives of banking systems from the two countries.”
Earlier, Rashid Saidov, the head of the Kazkomertsbank representative office in Dushanbe, said in his interview with Asia-Plus that the bank plans to offer an assortment of products and services in Tajikistan. In particular, they planned to offer medium-sized and large Tajik and international companies trade and project financing, financing of investment projects, assets management, short-term crediting and other bank services.
According to Saidov, Kazkomertsbank is the first private financial institute in Kazakhstan, and is fourth among CIS banks in terms of assets, loan portfolio and profit. ”This bank has great potential to assist any branch of Tajikistan’s economy,” Saidov said.
”At present the bank is engaged in inter-bank crediting and provides loans to Tajik banks,” said the source. “Today nearly all parts of the Tajik economy need loans and our bank is ready to get into this market,” Saidov said.
Kazkomertsbank was established in 1990 with headquarters in Almaty. The banks assets amount to 1.95 trillions tenge (equivalent to US $8.9 billion). The loan portfolio accounts for some 60 percent of this amount (5.4 billion U.S. dollars). In 2005, the bank’s profit was US$154.7 million. As of July 1 2006, the bank had 22 branches and 69 offices in Kazakhstan. The bank also has affiliates in Kyrgyzstan (Kazkomertsbank: Kyrgyzstan) and Russia (Moskomertsbank).
