OREANDA-NEWS. On July 24, 2007 Chairman of the Board of Directors of JSC "Bank TuranAlem" Mukhtar Ablyazov and Finance Minister of Azerbaijan Samir Sharifov had a meeting in Almaty, reported the press-centre of BTA.  

The meeting held on the initiative of the Azeri party has pre-echoed an upcoming visit by President Ilkham Aliyev of Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan due in August this year.

Speaking at the meeting, the parties favored an expansion of mutually beneficial cooperation between business communities of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan and voiced confidence that BTA would play a key role there. Mr Sharifov has invited BTA to implement promising projects in Azerbaijan saying that local banks are unable to finance long-term and large-scale projects due to their undercapitalization.

In turn, Mr Ablyazov conveyed interest in more vigorous involvement of BTA in the advancing market of Azerbaijan, including in the oil and gas sector, construction and real estate mortgage. He emphasized that currently the bank is able to finance any projects worth up to $1 billion owing to extensive resources and leading-edge banking technologies it has.

Mukhtar Ablyazov does not rule out that BTA can buy out a state bank in Azerbaijan, if its government takes a privatization decision.

"The expansion into countries with major markets is among priorities for our bank, and the economic build-up in Azerbaijan is impressive for the moment. Bank TuranAlem enjoying vast experience on the market of Kazakhstan, which has a structure similar to Azerbaijan, could successfully carry out projects there. I am convinced that the economic cooperation between our countries will be boosting, especially within the joint implementation of Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan project," Ablyazov pointed out at the meeting.