OREANDA-NEWS. January 20, 2010. At the session Elman Rustamov, the chairman of board of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan, stated that in 2009 under conditions of the global crisis at world financial and monetary markets local companies and banks’ found it difficult to raise foreign borrowing.

“Besides, there appeared the necessity to repay previous foreign debts prematurely. Under such conditions Azerbaijani banks repaid US 1.2 bn on foreign debts during the past year,” Rustamov said.

Under conditions of reduction of financial sources at domestic and overseas markets, the major commitment was to meet economic sector’s needs in money.

“With this purpose the CBA softened much monetary policy and cut accounting rate from 15% to 2%. As a whole, last year net issue of the CBA securities totaled 1.8 bn or 5% of GDP,” Rustamov added.

As of 31st December 2009, exchange rate was 0.8031 manats to the US dollar.