Azerbaijan, Baku, April 30 / Trend A. Ahundov /
A long-term strategy of Azerbaijan's economic development for 2011-2025, prepared by the Ministry of Economic Development, envisages bringing the share of leasing portfolio in the country's GDP from 0.5 percent in 2009 to at least 3 percent in 2025. This figure reduced up to 0.37 percent in GDP by late 2010.
The deputy head of the Strategic Planning Department of the Ministry İlkin Majidov said this at a two-day conference on Azerbaijani-Turkish cooperation on "Socio-economic development in terms of globalization" in Baku.
According to the draft strategy, the volume of the leasing market in the country in 2009 amounted to $ 215 million. The portfolio is expected to reach $ 3.108 billion by 2025.
According to the State Service for Insurance Supervision at the Azerbaijani Ministry of Finance, the total volume of insurance premiums in 2010 amounted to 155.59 million manat ($ 195 million at the exchange rate of 0,7979 AZN / USD in late 2010).
Accordingly, the insurance market will increase by 2025. According to the government's forecasts, it will increase by 16 times.
The ministry considers it necessary to increase the level of capitalization of insurance companies, to expand the range of products and services (reinsurance, life insurance, etc.), as well as to create a specialized fund for insurance in the agricultural sector, to improve the list of agricultural property and natural disasters as insurance claims in the relevant legislation to achieve these goals.
According to the schedule of capitalization of insurance companies, the minimum level of capital for insurers is determined at the level of 5 million manat and reinsurers - 10 million manat until 2013.
The head of the State Insurance Supervision Department Namig Khalilov earlier told Trend that the amount of the insurance market in Azerbaijan will double for the next five years.
"There are all prerequisites for this," he said. "These predictions are based mainly on the potential of the car insurance markets, private and corporate property insurance and voluntary life insurance".
He said that today the main task is for the insurance to mode from the public and corporate policy to a private individual policy and for people to better protect their property interests. This will significantly increase the volumes of the insurance market of the country. The potential worth 1 billion manat can not be a limit here.
"There are countries with the population less than in Azerbaijan. Their insurance markets have already exceeded a 1 billion level," Khalilov said.
At present, there are 28 insurance companies (including five with foreign capital), a reinsurance company, six brokerage companies (including five with foreign capital).