BAKU, Azerbaijan, Feb. 24
By Eldar Janashvili - Trend:
AzerGold CJSC, an Azerbaijani company that extracts, processes and sells gold and silver, has enriched Azerbaijan’s budget and gold reserves by tens of millions of US dollars, Zakir Ibrahimov, chairman of the executive board of AzerGold CJSC, said at the company’s press conference on the results of 2019, Trend reports from the event Feb. 24.
Ibrahimov noted that AzerGold CJSC significantly increased all types of tax payments last year.
Thus, last year about 13.5 million manat ($7.9 million) were transferred to Azerbaijan’s state budget as a whole, the chairman of the company’s board added.
Given that this amount was 12.6 million manat ($7.4 million) in 2018, budget payments increased by 843,000 manat (6.7 percent) last year, said Ibrahimov.
In addition, in order to organize the export of extracted precious metals to global markets, as well as form Azerbaijan’s gold reserves at the expense of Azerbaijani gold, the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) organized the purchase of 57,000 ounces of pure gold, which makes 95 percent of the total sales volume (about $85 million).
AzerGold CJSC, which began operations in July 2016, is engaged in the study, research, exploration, management of precious and non-ferrous metal deposits, their extraction, processing and sale, as well as the application of new technologies in this area, improving the material and technical base and other work related to the development of this sphere.
In 2017-2020, AzerGold CJSC sold more than 173,000 ounces of gold and 290,000 ounces of silver.
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