BAKU, Azerbaijan, Mar.10
By Fidan Babayeva – Trend:
Revenues from the sale of oil and gas in the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) accounted for 70.4 percent of its total revenues in 2020, Trend reports referring to the report of the Cabinet of Ministers for the past year.
According to the report, in 2020, the fund received incomes from the sale of oil and gas in the amount of more than 6.58 billion manat ($3.87 billion).
"In dollar terms, SOFAZ's revenue from oil and gas sales last year was almost 2.2 times less compared to 2019 (almost $8.6 billion)," the report said.
The document noted that in 2020, in order to implement the agreement reached by the OPEC countries due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the volume of production at the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli field decreased by 10.5 percent compared to 2019 (195.1 million barrels), amounting to 174.6 million barrels.
"On the other hand, the cost of crude oil last year was significantly lower than in 2019, at $38.5," added the report.
Revenues of SOFAZ in 2020 made up 9.36 billion manat ($5.51 billion), while expenditures - over 12.4 billion manat ($7.3 billion).
Nearly 7.4 billion manat ($4.3 billion) of the revenues were received from the implementation of oil and gas agreements, including about 6.6 billion manat ($3.9 billion) from the sale of profit oil and gas, 767.8 million manat ($451.6 million) as bonus payments, 20.4 million manat ($12 million) as transit payments and 6.7 million manat ($3.9 million) as acreage fee.
Besides, SOFAZ transferred 12.2 billion manat ($7.18 billion) to the government budget in 2020.
Since January 1, 2021, the value of the fund’s assets surpassed $43.5 billion, increasing by 0.56 percent compared to the early 2020 ($43.3 billion). Although SOFAZ’s spending exceeded its revenues amid the global economic drop due to the COVID-19 pandemic, its assets increased through revenues from managing SOFAZ’s assets and extra-budgetary revenues.
In January 2021, the total amount of extra-budgetary revenues and revenues from managing SOFAZ’s assets equaled to $3.2 billion.
(1 USD = 1.7 AZN on Mar.10)