Thursday, February 16 2012 19:48
Expert: Small and medium enterprises in Armenia are not in a good state
ArmInfo. The small and medium enterprises in Armenia are not in a good state, Director for Corporate Banking of Ameriabank Gagik Sahakyan said at today's press conference in Yerevan when commenting on the current state of SMEs in the country.
According to him, over the past few years the state of the small and medium enterprises has been considerably improving, however now the situation is far from being good. "SMEs are not a priority direction now", Sahakyan said. He added that the monopolies and the high level of market concentration continue hindering the development of SMEs in Armenia. The statistics demonstrates, however, that the market concentration level is declining, Sahakyan said.
In order to improve the state of SMEs in Armenia, one should remove the administrative burden, i.e. to switch to a differentiated policy towards SMEs and large business, he said. Most representatives of SMEs often lack the relevant documents when applying to the bank, whereas today the banks are interested in lending to SMEs. Sahakyan added that the bank's internal regulations with respect to SMEs are being simplified, the problem still remains unresolved.
To note, according to the data of the Agency of Rating Marketing Information (ArmInfo), received on the basis of the analysis of the financial reports of Armenian banks, the quality of the summary credit portfolio of "nontrade" financing of SMEs considerably worsened over the past year.
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