Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 26
By Maksim Tsurkov – Trend:
The State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) will continue to participate in currency auctions in 2017, since manat bonds are envisaged in the Fund’s budget, SOFAZ Executive Director Shahmar Movsumov said in an exclusive interview with Trend.
Movsumov noted that a big part of SOFAZ’s budget accounts for manat expenditures, mainly for transfers to the state budget and other transfers.
The Fund’s main revenues from the sale of oil and gas are received in foreign currency, particularly in US dollars, and in order to sell the abovementioned bonds, the currency obtained from transactions is converted into manat, he explained.
In order to prevent negative impact on the market of large-scale sales of currency and for timely implementation of budget commitments, SOFAZ implements even currency sales through auctions organized by the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA), added Movsumov.
Over 11 months of 2016, according to him, SOFAZ sold funds worth $4.6 billion through currency auctions.
SOFAZ’s transfers to the Azerbaijani state budget are envisaged at 7.615 billion manats in 2016 and 6.1 billion manats in 2017.
SOFAZ was established in 1999 with assets of $271 million.
Based on SOFAZ’s regulations, its funds may be used for construction and reconstruction of strategically important infrastructure facilities, as well as solving important national problems.
The main goals of the State Oil Fund are accumulation of resources and placement of the Fund’s assets abroad in order to minimize the negative effect on the economy, prevention of "Dutch disease" to some extent, promotion of resource accumulation for future generations, and supporting current social and economic processes in Azerbaijan.
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