Azerbaijan, Baku, 31 October / Trend corr. N.Ismayilova/ The Azerbaijani Government plans to increase the transfers from the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) to the state budget by 29.34% in 2009.
SOFAZ transfers to the state budget totalled AZN 4.915bln (AZN 3.8bln in 2008) in the draft main financial document for 2009, which was submitted to the Azerbaijani Parliament.
"The ongoing crisis on the international financial markets will not affect the revenues of SOFAZ, on the contrary, their forecasted amount is expected to increase," SOFAZ Executive Director Shahmar Movsumov said formerly.
According to Movsumov, fall in oil prices demonstrated that selecting a conservative approach to draw the SOFAZ budget was a right decision. In 2007, oil price was set at the budget at $50 per bbl, but this year the figure totalled $70 per bbl.
On 31 October, the official exchange rate totalled 0.8095 AZN/USD.
The correspondent can be contacted at [email protected]