Azerbaijan, Baku, June 19 / Trend I. Khalilova /
The International Finance Corporation plans to publish results of monitoring on business held by poll among small and medium entrepreneurship of Azerbaijan on June 25, business improvement project said on June 19.
IFC launched research of business in Azerbaijan late 2007. Poll was conducted among 1,800 companies.
"The project aims to simplify administrative procedures for private companies to effectively operate on the market. These procedures include simplification of business registration (introduction of "single window") and developed program on simplification giving of licenses and permissions."
According to research of corporation, there are over 100 different licenses given to 70 organizations. There is necessity for each company to get several permissions to operate on the market. Their number hits 10 permissions.
IFC submitted its recommendations on each kind of license and permissions to the government. Project of the President's decree on launching reforms in licensing envisaging simplification of this system was prepared upon these recommendations. First, general list of licenses and permissions is expected to be considered, determination of doubling cases, simplification of some of them, check on inconsistency with the international practice of license giving.
IFC plans to design strategy of reforming in business licensing for Azerbaijan. General regulations of giving and canceling of license are planned to be developed within these actions. Collection of data on licensing will be conducted in 2009 and 2010. United register of permissions to be submitted for public will be designed as a result of whole work. Register will be designed on economic activity that allows determining necessary number and expenses on getting permissions for concrete business in on-line regime. As a result of these reforms, expenses on getting permissions and licenses will reduce one/third.
Results of preliminary poll demonstrated that annual expenses on licensing activity of Azerbaijani entrepreneurs hit 35 million manat. These calculations are made given official and unofficial payments on the basis of local companies' poll.
If one third of different license and permissions are cancelled in Azerbaijan, expenses of business sector will reduce 12.6 million manat per year, IFC experts said.
Presently, roughly 16.3 million manat per year is spent to organize granting of licenses and permissions. But is gets profit in the amount of 12.5 million manat.
Manager of the project said that reduction of number of licenses and permissions will allow economizing 5 million manat for the state budget.
The project is realized together with BP Company and Switzerland's State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) in Azerbaijan.
The program covers five years. It envisages reduction of regulating obstacles in activity of entrepreneurs, conducting of monitoring on business, increase of legal knowledge of entrepreneurs by conducting enlightenment work.
SECO gave the government grant in the amount of $4.3 million but BP - roughly $0.456 million to improve business.
The International Finance Corporation assisted to make changes and adopt 11 major laws/regulations that allowed small and medium enterprises economizing $93 million via improvement business projects in CIS countries.
On June 19, the official exchange rate is 0.804 manat to $1.
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