Azerbaijan, Baku, 8 November / corr Trend I.Khalilova / The Azerbaijani government intends to be careful about indexation of population's deposits, realized in Savings Bank of Azerbaijan SSR by 1 January 1992. Azerbaijan will examine it after it studies proposals of a working group set up in the Milli Majlis (parliament) in December 2007, Minister of Finance Samir Sharifov said.
"We should not fall under populist statements, and make decision carefully so as not to repeat mistakes of other countries. Besides, offers for realization of indexation of deposits have not been submitted yet," minister said.
Neighboring countries, which have launched indexation, experience serious financial crisis and appeal to the International Monetary Fund for financial assistance, he said.
"As a result of return of deposits, these countries wanted to increase the population's confidence in the bank sector, but in current situation, quite on the contrary, depositors began to take away their deposits," Sharifov said.
Granting of these savings was suspended several times due to complication of process of indexation of population's deposits and the working group was set up in the parliament to prepare for this process. The process can be launched only after development of mechanism and adoption of Law on Indexation of Population's Deposits Realized in Savings Bank of Azerbaijan SSR by 1 January 1992.
Process of indexation is carried out only in several CIS countries. Thus, the process is planned to last over 30 years in Russia. Issue of indexation was raised several times in Azerbaijan parliament, but start can not be given to the beginning of return of deposits without the decision of state commission, established in 2005 and chaired by Prime Minister Arthur Rasizade. Coefficient acceptable for the country should be defined for this aim. Although, AZN 50mln was allocated in the public budget for 2006 to launch the process of indexation on deposits, funds for these aims can not be allocated from a treasury without presence of a mechanism.
According to preliminary estimations of the Ministry of Finance, indexation can be realized over eight years and $600mln are necessary for this purpose. About 1mln 986,000 depositors were revealed during inventory conducted in Kapital Bank A total sum of their deposits made up 4.8bln soviet rubles. The Ministry of Finance prepared three optiosn of realization of indexation, requiring $0.3-$0.4bln, $0.5-$0.55bln and $0.8-$1bln.
Indexation was completed only in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Republic Byelorussia out of the CIS countries. Presently, the process of indexation of deposits goes on in Russia, Ukraine and Moldova. It is carried out differently in each of these countries. Thus, one soviet ruble is accepted for $0.0033 in the Russian Federation, $0.006 - in Kazakhstan (or 150 rubles are accepted for $1), $0.009 - in Ukraine, $0.33 - in Byelorussia, $0.20 in Moldova and $0.024 in Kyrgyzstan.
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