SPECIFIC WEIGHT OF ASSETS OF RA BANKING SYSTEM IN GDP MUST BE REDUCED TO 40- 50%: CHIEF BANKER OF ARMENIA

ArmInfo
2007-06-25 20:47:00

Specific weight of assets of RA banking system must be reduced to
40-50% like in the developed countries, Head of RA Central Bank Tigran
Sargsyan said and added that the annual growth of assets should make
up 40% at the minimum against the present 20-25%.

T. Sargsyan said that the year 2006 was rather successful for the
banking system as all the indicators showed high growth rates and,
what is of most importance, a potential has been accumulated in the
system. He thinks that 25-30% of annual growth will be insufficient
for the banking system henceforth, under conditions of its low
participation in the economy development, that is indicated by specific
weight of credits in GDP.

He emphasized that it is necessary to pay attention to the number of
juridical and physical persons – the bank clients, which grew by 8,5%
or 60,000 due to growth of the number of physical persons. The number
of clients in the banking system makes up 763,000, where the physical
persons make up 723,000 and the juridical ones – 39,000. The number
of the banking accounts during a year grew by 3,4% to 881,000. CB is
dissatisfied with this digit. T. Sargsyan thinks that the number of
clients-physical persons should be reduced by half at the minimum,
as one person has accounts in two or more banks on average. It turns
out that about 360,000 people have accounts in the banking system ,
i.e. only one person of every second family has an account in the
bank. The number of juridical persons-clients of the banks should be
also reduced by half if not more, that is, to 18,000-20,000.

Presently, 54,000 juridical persons and 48,000 private entrepreneurs
have been registered in Armenia, while only 37% of juridical persons
have banking accounts. In fact, upon the different polls’ results, only
30-35% of the registered juridical persons act. Part of enterprises
is either in shadow or they are created for another purposes. There
is a serious problem in this sphere and the Central Bank together
with the government should implement measures to solve this problem,
T. Sargsyan said.