Azerbaijan, Baku, November 22 /Trend, A. Akhundov /
The National Fund for Entrepreneurship Support (NFES), which is part of the Economic Development Ministry of Azerbaijan, will be assigned 90 million manat, in 2012, an increase of 56 million manat or 2.6 times against this year, Finance Minister Samir Sharifov reported on Tuesday. He was speaking at the Parliament's plenary meeting devoted to examination of draft state budget for 2012 and three following years.
"A total of 453 million was assigned from the state budget to the NFES in 2006-2011 and the fund's portfolio currently stands at 720 million manat," Mr Sharifov noted.
Next year, eight million manat will be assigned as loans to the State Agriculture Loans Agency to encourage agricultural producers and 35 million manat will be assigned as loans to the state-owned leasing company Aqrolizinq to promote the sale of agricultural machines, he reported.
"Aqrolizinq and the State Agriculture Loans Agency have been assigned 318 million manat and 40 million manat, respectively, since they began to operate," Mr Sharifov said.
In addition, it is planned to assign 20 million manat to the Azerbaijani Mortgage Fund which is part of the Central Bank so total payments to the fund including the above sum will, along with the money assigned over previous years, reach 116 million manat, the Minister said.
The official exchange rate is 0.7865 AZN/USD.