This was announced at the expanded session of the Board of the Central Bank of Uzbekistan dedicated to the results of activity of the banking system in nine months of 2010.

The assets of the banks increased by 31% year-on-year in the reporting period and made up over 20.1 trillion soums.

The banks in Uzbekistan actively continued to finance enterprises of real sector of economy. Currently, the aggregate volume of credit investment to basic industries of economy makes up about 11.4 trillion soums. Share of loans directed to investment purposes made up 74% in total loan portfolio of the banks.

In nine months of 2010, the commercial banks also carried out huge work on financial rehabilitation of insolvent enterprises. Currently, the commercial banks rehabilitated production in 132 enterprises of 144, accepted to balance of the banks. Sixty-one of them were realized to strategic investors.

Due to investment of commercial banks for 181.7 billion soums, these enterprises produced goods for 344.7 billion soums, of which goods for US$158.2 million were exported. They created 22,000 new jobs.

The commercial banks also paid special attention to financial support of small and private businesses. Total credits, issued to small and private businesses, rose 1.5 times year-on-year to over 2.1 trillion soums. Due to these loans, some 23,000 people were provided with jobs.

The meeting said that adopted measures helped to attract free resources of population and businesses to deposits at credit organizations. The deposits of population rose by 61% year-on-year in January-September 2010 to 4.1 trillion soums.

It is worth to mention that currently over 7.5 million banking payment cards were introduced into circulation in Uzbekistan. Some 64,976 POS-terminals were installed at trade and service points. The sum of transactions with banking payment cards rose twice year-on-year.