YEREVAN, September 30, /ARKA/. Nederlandse Financierings-Maatschappij voor Ontwikkelingslanden N.V. (FMO, the Dutch Development Bank) disbursed a loan of USD 15 million to Armenian ARARATBANK OJSC for business lending, the bank said today in a press release.
The loan will be disbursed among borrowers for the amount of up to USD 1 million each at 10%-12% interest rate and a 5 -year maturity period. The enterprises with total assets not exceeding USD 15 million and with a number of employees not surpassing 300 will get the opportunity to make use of these financial resources. Credit facilities will mainly be directed at financing business projects of export companies.
“Though this is the first project of our cooperation with the Dutch Development Finance Company, we hope we will have a long-term and mutually beneficial cooperation and will manage to offer our clients long-term, accessible and competitive loan conditions”, said CEO of ARARATBANK OJSC Mr. Ashot Osipyan during the contract signing ceremony at the third annual meeting of the Dutch Development Bank titled “Exchange on the Future of Banking.”
At the same time he highly appraised the overall efficiency of investments made in Armenia by the company.
Nederlandse Financierings-Maatschappij voor Ontwikkelingslanden N.V. (FMO) was founded in 1970 by the Dutch Government, commercial banks, the national employers’ association, labor unions and private investors to make investments in private sectors projects in emerging countries and markets. In March 2008 FMO was granted a bank status. Today the bank is officially under supervision of the Dutch Central Bank. As of December 2013 FMO had operated in more than 80 different developing countries and emerging markets as a financial partner. Investment portfolio of the company made EUR 6.7 billion as of 2013 thanks to which it is among the largest banks financing private sectors.

ARARATBANK is owned by Barsegh Beglaryan (75%), the owner of the largest oil trader Flash and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (24%). ARARATBANK‘s assets stood at 116.5 billion drams in late June this year. Its liabilities were worth 94.8 billion drams, the capital-21.6 billion drams and credit investments-60 billion drams. In the first quarter it earned 2 billion drams in profit. -0-