Azerbaijan, Baku, July 12 / Trend A. Akhundov /
The costs of organisations which obtain treasury services in the State Treasury Agency of the Azerbaijani Finance Ministry have been carried out only in non-cash form since July 2012 due to the development of cashless payments, Finance Minister Samir Sharifov told ministers at a meeting of the Cabinet chaired by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and focusing on the socio-economic development in the first half of 2012 and the upcoming challenges.
"Along with plastic cards used by physical entities to get salaries, benefits, pensions and other social benefits, corporate cards issued to legal entities are expected to be widely used to maintain budgetary and off-budget expenditure," Sharifov said.
He said that Azerbaijan allocated 61 million manat to fulfil its obligations on public debt in the first half of 2012.
"Around 35 million manat were allocated for the loans to agricultural producers during the reporting period, 10 million manat to purchase breeding stock, 33 million manat - leasing services, eight million manat - loans to farmers and 110 million manat - entrepreneurship development," Sharifov said.
He said that the number of investment projects financed by the National Entrepreneurship Support Fund increased by 57.1 per cent and the amount issued for soft loans by 53 per cent compared to last year.
"The total assets of the Azerbaijani insurance market have doubled and the total share capital of insurance companies by 3.3 times," Sharifov said.
The official exchange rate is 0.7855 AZN/USD on July 12.