YEREVAN, March 26. /ARKA/. Armenia’s government, central bank and commercial banks are taking joint steps to spur lending, Vache Gabrielyan, vice-premier and economic integration and reforms minister, said on Thursday.
“Yesterday, the central bank’s board decided to lower the lombard repo rate to 12%, and it means those short-term measures we have taken to stabilize things have already produced results and we no longer use them,” he said.
At the same time, Gabrielyan stressed that these measures are not enough to put things right, and the government, along with the central bank, is now providing support to a number of programs, one of which is a program that implies mortgage loan interests payment from income tax amount.
The government assumes these expenses to encourage mortgage loan takers.
Gabrielyan said that the government is now negotiating with commercial banks to restructure liabilities of those debtors who are not able to repay their loans.
“Commercial banks are not interested in accumulating tremendous reserves of immovable property, and they are ready for restructuring,” he said adding that the central bank is now dealing with this matter at the government’s instruction.
The minister said that lending in Armenia slowed down after the dram devaluated in late 2014 by 14%, but despite that the banks extended loans totaling AMD 272 billion in January and February alone. —–0—-
