YEREVAN, JANUARY 22, NOYAN TAPAN. "Armeconombank does not plan to raise the interest rates of its credits in 2009: the current interest rates will remain until the end of this year," the bank's CEO David Sukiasian stated at the January 22 press conference. According to him, negotiations are under way and the interest rates of deposits in Armenian drams are likely to rise slightly. As regards the rumors about the reduction of crediting and nonprovision of mortgage loans in some cases, D. Sukiasian noted that most of the funds attracted by Armeconombank have been financial resources received from international structures. These funds are used to provide credits for small and medium business, mortgage loans, etc. In his words, there will be no deviations from these programs. "There was no suspension, just the terms for mortgage loans have become a bit stricter in Armenia. Perhaps some Armenian banks have had liquidity problems and provided less amounts of credits in order to deal with their problems. However, it would be wrong to call such banks problematic," D. Sukiasian underlined. It was mentioned that in 2008 the average market value of Armeconombank's shares grew by 24%. As of January 1, 2009, the overall capital of the bank exceeded 8.6 billion drams. Its assets made more than 52 billion drams, while the 2008 profit amounted to 460 million drams (about 1 million 484 thousand USD).

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