ArmInfo. New segments of SME development are being formed in Armenia. They will gradually become the key segments and will assume the role of drivers, Aram Baloyan, Chief Commercial Officer at INECOBANK, has told ArmInfo.
"The market condition has recently changed significantly. The economy is undergoing the process of diversification. Today the market requires new ideas, new growth drivers," he said, noting that last year the share of lending to services in INECOBANK's portfolio has considerably grown. In particular, the matter concerns financing of construction for incoming tourism development.
In this light, Baloyan noted that in 2015 the share of trade in the Bank's loan book was 53%, industry - 18%, services - 17%. Investments in these segments considerably increased.
According to Baloyan, the biggest growth rates of the non-performing loans are typical to construction and agriculture due to the dependency on the weather conditions. "Any sector has more or less risky projects of financing. From this point of view, INECOBANK can be called more conservative - we choose projects with lower probability of default," he says.
To note, founded in 1996, INECOBANK CJSC is a dynamically developing bank on the financial market of Armenia. The bank is in TOP-3 by SME lending portfolio ensuring 75.8 bln AMD by 1 Jan 2016 (almost 48% from the total loan portfolio of the bank) which is 2-fold higher than last year's indicator. In Q4 alone the growth of SME credit portfolio increased 2.1- fold, which was mainly determined by the process of merging with ProCredit Armenia Bank, the portfolio of which on SME totaled 36.7 bln AMD. INECOBANK successfully cooperates with international structures on various programs, including on lending to SME. The credit portfolio of INECOBANK totaled 159.6 bln AMD or 67.5% of the bank's assets by 1 Jan 2016. In y-o-y terms the total credit portfolio of INECOBANK grew by 42% and in Q4 alone - by 53.2%.