Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 12
By Emin Aliyev - Trend: Expenditures on education in the 2014 state budget of Azerbaijan should be doubled, the member of the Milli Majlis (parliament) of Azerbaijan, member of the Parliamentary Committee on Economic Policy, Ali Masimli said on Nov. 12 during the ongoing discussions of the budget package.
"Currently, the share of education expenditures to GDP is about 2.5 per cent. It is necessary to bring them up to the amount of five to six per cent of GDP, which would allow to significantly speeding up the development of this sector," he said.
According to the MP, the same principle should be applied in respect of the salaries of state employees - teachers, healthcare professionals and scientists.
"The issue of the need to increase wages of these people is constantly on the agenda. It is necessary to provide government employees with a decent living. A phased increase can be carried out given the large amount of funds that will be needed for this. Result of the application of this principle will be raising the wages of teachers and other public employees to 800-1000 manats," Masimli said.
The 2014 state budget envisages education expenditures in the amount of 1.6 billion manats, which is 12 per cent higher than the amount projected for the current year.
For comparison, in 2013 this figure amounted to about 1.4 billion manats.
The funding of education expenditures has increased in all respects. The only exception is the cost of higher education, which can be explained by the changes in funding schemes of their activities.
Official exchange rate for Nov. 12 is 0.7843 AZN/USD.