The agency said the support of the Government of Uzbekistan, which holds 100% shares in the bank, positively affects the rating. The agency noted sufficiency of own capital - normative H1 was 17.3% as of 1 April 2009.

The rating agency said NBU dominates in the financial market of Uzbekistan and has positive cooperation experience with large foreign banks. The bank possesses large number of credit resources of the foreign financial institutions, allocated to finance investment projects in Uzbekistan. High level of depreciable assets restrain solvency of the bank, first of all.

Irina Velieva, head of rating of credit institutions of Expert RA, said: “The bank is backbone in Uzbekistan and credits largest enterprises in Uzbekistan under guarantees of the government. This causes low diversification of loan portfolio, low assets profitability, as well as strong dependence from financial policy of Uzbekistan.”

NBU specializes on crediting of enterprises, directly or indirectly connected with the government and renders wide-scale services for individuals and small and medium businesses. As of 1 April 2009, the assets of NBU made up 97.6 billion rubles in line with the Uzbek accounting standards. The own capital made up 14.7 billion rubles and pre-tax income for 2008 made up 365 million rubles.