ICD has big plans for SMEs, says CEO

JEDDAH: The Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector (ICD) and OJSC Agroinvestbank of the Republic of Tajikistan have signed a memorandum of understanding for cooperation to consider extension of a line of financing facility to OJSC Agroinvestbank as part of the country program allocation of $25 million for Tajikistan.
The line of financing facility will be extended by OJSC Agroinvestbank to the SMEs sector to project’s in industrial, communication, technology, health, construction and agricultural sectors.
Khaled Al-Aboodi, CEO and general manager of ICD, commented: “The small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have a crucial role to play in a country’s growth and development, and ICD has big plans for them. This is an important sector in all the member countries, including the higher income ones.”
The CEO said: “ICD is now focusing on this sector by extending lines of finance to local banks in addition to the establishment of ASR Leasing Company in Tajikistan (a company specialized to provide Shariah-compliant leasing products to the SME sector.”
ICD previously extended a total of $11.5 million line of financing facility for the development of Small and Medium Enterprises in Tajikistan which demonstrates ICD’s firm commitment to develop the private sector in its member countries.
The chairman of OJSC Agroinvestbank commented: “The close and mutual fruitful cooperation between Agroinvestbank and ICD positively affects the development of the economy of the Republic of Tajikistan through financing SMEs in key sectors such as agricultural, industry, construction and etc.”
The chairman added: “The Islamic banking products have a huge potential to meet the increasing demand for long-term financing of SMEs in Tajikistan.”
In this regard, the signing of current MoU is a step toward strengthening and deepening our further collaboration in context of development of the economy of Tajikistan and enabling SMEs access to finance.
The mandate of ICD is to support economic development and promote the development of the private sector in its member countries through providing financing facilities and/or investments which are in accordance with the principles of Shariah.
The bank was established in 1992 and the name of the bank has changed in 2002, making it in accordance with the requirements of the new civil code of the Republic Tajikistan Nowadays OJSC “Agroinvestbank” is one of the systematically important banks in Tajikistan and has considerable infrastructural capabilities.
In every large cities and virtually in all regional centers, they operate 61 branches, 60 banking service centers and 152 remittance offices of the Bank. Throughout the whole system of the bank — 32 thousand legal entities (enterprises, organizations, companies and private entrepreneurs) are serviced and the number of individuals who have accounts in the bank consists of 276 thousand people.