Among participants of the seminar were heads and employees of the Central Bank, Uzbekistan Banking Association, and commercial banks.

Deputy chairperson of the Central Bank of Uzbekistan Shukhrat Haydarov and Managing Director of Financial Institutions Ratings of Standard & Poor's John Gibling opened the event and noted there are perspectives for further interaction in raising sustainability of financial-banking system of Uzbekistan.

Currently, Standard & Poor’s assigned ratings to 11 banks of Uzbekistan, including National Bank of Uzbekistan, Khalq Bank, Uzpromstroybank, Ipoteka-Bank, Kapitalbank, Orient Finans Bank, Samarkand Bank and Turkiston Bank.

Sergei Voronenko, Standard & Poor’s analyst, said that the agency raised rating of four banks of Uzbekistan by one notch in autumn 2011 in line with new rating criteria. He said that this is evidence for interest of Standard & Poor’s to the region and intention for objective assessment of strong and weak sides of the financial institutions.

Sergei Voronenko briefed participants on main characteristics of the banking sector of Uzbekistan in his report “Ratings of the Uzbek banks in international context”.

In the report it was noted that positive factors are strong state support of real sector, low debt burden of the sector and the government, as well as high potential of the growth of the banking sector. It was noted that Uzbekistan can obtain sovereign rating of Standard & Poor’s.

Experts noted that sustainable development of the banking system and level of capitalization of the banks is adequate to the economic growth of Uzbekistan.

During the event, the agency presented its criteria for rating assessment of the bank, which was updated recently. Yuliya Kozlova, credit analyst of Standard & Poor’s, said that new criteria allow to understand impact of the state authorities to the sector.