He said that for the development of women’s entrepreneurship, five pilot groups of women entrepreneurs were created in five Azerbaijani districts as part of the Second Azerbaijan Rural Investment Project (AzRIP-2), being implemented with the support of the World Bank (WB).
“The goal of creating these groups was to attract women in rural areas to business and ensure self-employment,” he noted. “We already have very positive results, but we aren’t going to stop there and have created special youth groups that will form special business incubators. About 100 women have already participated in the project, despite it was implemented in a short time, and new companies were created on their own funds.”
He added that along with own funds of entrepreneurs, the State Service also decided to allocate special grants to them.
“We decided not to rely solely on the personal funds of entrepreneurs, and started issuing grants to them in the amount of their own funds,” he said. “So far, we have already issued two grants worth 5,000 manats each. At the same time, we solved the issue of sustainable access of women entrepreneurs to loans. As you know, the main problem of banks and credit unions is the provision of collateral and the presence of a guarantor. The combination of entrepreneurs into groups enabled them to attract credit resources together, and each woman acts as a guarantor for the others. Thus, the banks’ risks are diversified. The loans are issued for up to five years.”
(1.7 manats = 1 USD on Sept. 19)
More about: World-Bank
