YEREVAN, April 16. /ARKA/. The Central Bank of Armenia is ready to provide the financial system with appropriate liquidity, if necessary, though the financial system is sufficiently saturated with capital and has sufficient liquidity to serve the economy, Director of the Central Bank’s Department for Financial Stability Andranik Grigoryan said Wednesday at a press conference in the Unified Information Center.
Recalling that the financial system of Armenia quite successfully closed the year 2019 and also successfully started 2020, Grigoryan said that at the time of the onset of the crisis caused by the spread of coronavirus, pretty good foundations had already been formed for the system to enable it to assist both clients and the economy as a whole through various measures.
“Since the beginning of March, the Central Bank began to hold discussions with representatives of the financial system in almost daily format to identify steps to mitigate the impact of the crisis on the economy,” he said.
Among these steps, Grigoryan singled out the readiness of the Armenian commercial banks to work with clients on an individual approach basis, review their loan conditions and delay the loan repayment so that clients do not have problems with servicing their obligations.
“This was done on the condition that customers, taking into account these revisions, should not have any problems with their credit history for two or three months and, further, also with an increase in the credit burden,” he explained.
Grigoryan also said that for more intensive stimulation of banks’ economic activities, the Central Bank downed its refinancing rate.
“This is seen in some countries as an unexpected step, but the central bank took it to stimulate activity in the economy and avoid deep consequences of the crisis,” he explained.
On April 17, the Board of the Central Bank of Armenia decided to lower the interest rate by 0.25 percentage points, setting it at 5.25%.
Grigoryan said that commercial banks issued statements that all program and mortgage loans, as well as business loans provided under international programs, would be reviewed so that customers would have a chance of loan payment delay for six months. “This will allow them to accumulate additional cash to solve liquidity problems,” he explained.
Along with that, he said, thanks to working with banks, it was decided to slightly review the banking regulation regime, which would allow the banking system to serve the economy a little more flexibly and implement government anti-crisis programs.
Grigoryan finds it important that customers continue to work in the “Stay at Home” mode using online platforms.
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