Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 28
By Taleh Mursagulov - Trend:
The annual volume of non-cash payments in Azerbaijan will reach about 17 billion manats by 2021, says the state program on the expansion of digital payments in 2018-2020, approved by the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev.
Implementation of the program will allow to increase the share of non-cash payments by seven percent annually.
According to the program, the share of cash payments in transactions carried out in the country's economy will fall from 74 percent to 40 percent.
Three basic terms and specific goals for each of them have been defined in order to speed up the implementation of the state program.
As noted in the state program, the creation of a more favorable environment involves not only prohibiting regulation, but also the use of special incentive mechanisms.
"In order to make the economy transparent, it is necessary to remove the institutional obstacles hindering the development of digital payments. For this, it is necessary to fully ensure property rights and contractual rights of entrepreneurs, create markets that lead to efficient and competitive activities, improve the tax system, including eliminating cases of tax evasion," the program reads.
It is also mentioned that for the development of financial markets it is necessary to increase the activity of the banking sector, increase competition within the sector, create an active money market, improve the bank's risk assessment, take measures to offer cheap and high-quality banking services to entrepreneurs and the public.
"Strengthening financial inclusion requires ensuring the availability of banking services in all regions, expanding banking products and services and improving their quality, reducing costs and increasing public awareness of digital payments. The government program identified four strategic directions and 16 priorities in order to ensure the fundamental conditions for the expansion of digital payments," reads the program.