Moldova

In the midst of the global financial crisis, officials at the National Bank of Azerbaijan are making time to review a draft covered bond law for the South Caucasian country, in a sign of their commitment to a project that is aimed at stimulating its mortgage market.

Reduced bank funding options, a growing reliance on retail deposits, and a frozen secondary real estate market. Sound familiar? No, it’s not the US, but Kazakhstan. But while covered bonds are coming to the fore in the States and being taken up in CIS countries such as the Ukraine, the market’s direction in Kazakhstan is less clear.

When the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s and US Treasury’s covered bond announcements came out, David Lucterhand, chief of party at Access to Credit Initiative (ATCI) in Kiev, reacted by writing to colleagues: “Finally, somebody understands what we’ve been talking about for years!”

The 12th Central European Covered Bond Conference took place last week, but while the event returned to Warsaw for the third time, it focused on several issues that have only recently come to the fore. The Cover discussed the highlights of the event with Otmar Stöcker, managing director of the Association of German Pfandbrief Banks, co-host of the conference with Poland’s Mortgage Credit Foundation, which initiated the conference series.