Azerbaijan, Baku / corr. Trend I.Khalilova / The Taxes Minister of Azerbaijan, Fazil Mammadov said in an interview with Trend that over the recent period, the specific gravity of the income tax in the budget revenues fluctuated between 68-71%. Last year this indicator was 69.8% and will increase next year.
According to him, the amount of the budget income will significantly increase and naturally the important part of this growth will fall on tax incomes. The forecasts for the Taxes Ministry this year is more by 47% compared with 2006. This imposes an important task for the tax department this year. "The Taxes Ministry will make every effort to implement the forecasts over the tax incomes in 2007," the Minister said.
The social-economical forecasts of 2007 states that this year there will be additional tax potential. On the other hand, the development of the hydrocarbon fields will ensure accelerated exploitation and we are therefore expecting a significant growth.
Making a number of amendments to the Tax Code of Azerbaijan at the end of 2006, as well as to future improvement of the tax control mechanism and applying modern information technology provides an opportunity to create additional basis for the taxation.
Touching upon the increase of transfers to the State budget due to the full development of the fields "Azeri"-"Chirag"-"Gunashli", the Minister said that in 2006 the contractors transferred AZN 972,900 mln from this project as revenue tax, an increase of 42.4% from the intended amount. It is possible to say that the expectations have justified themselves. "Despite this the revenue will increase," he said.
"The rapid increase of oil revenues persuaded the tax office to improve their control on these revenues, especially to work out the control mechanism on the revenues of foreign companies", the Minister said. "The requirements imposing new economical conditions before impel us to gradually raise the professional level of the staff, as well as provide modern technology and program support."