President gives Executive Power of Sumgayit AZN 5 million under unknown projects

By the order of the President Ilham Aliyev on February 25th, the Executive Power of Sumgayit city was allocated AZN 5 million from the State Budget Reserve Fund of the President of AR. These funds will be used to "accelerate socio-economic development and continued work on the improvement of the city." Independent experts, in turn, regard such opaque government's decision as politically tainted.
The head of state visited the city of Sumgait, where since 2011 under reconstruction Park of Culture and Rest named after Nasimi. The head of EP of Sumgayit Eldar Azizov introduced him to the road construction projects along this park, expansion of the road Baku-Guba, Koroghlu street, construction of Green Theatre, erecting monuments victims of the January 1990 tragedy and genocide in Khojaly.
Prior to this, the Presidential Reserve Fund gave EP of Sumgayit several orders of more than 10 million manat. Public accountability for expenditure of these funds is missing.
A member of the coalition of non-governmental organizations National Budget Group ( NBG) Rovshan Agayev told Turan, that the analysis of the reserve fund of the President shows that the bulk of these funds are used for projects of investment character . Funds allocated from this fund to local executive bodies are used for various investment projects. This is contrary to the law of the Republic of Azerbaijan "On Budget System", as the government financed from the state budget, public investment on more specific projects. NBG in its conclusions on the state budget research expressed a negative stance on the matter.
Presidential Reserve Fund may not exist in many countries. In Georgia, for example, the size of this fund is incommensurable with Azerbaijan. In Finland, this fund has been used as a source of government cash awards for achievements in a particular field of activity. In previous years, the size of the fund in Finland was approximately 400 thousand Euro.
In Azerbaijan since 2006 established by law 2% volume of the fund from the state budget. At the same transparency and accountability on the use of these funds is not. Agayev offers to liquidate the fund and create instead fund state awards.
In 2012 and 2013 the used contingency of the President Fund were 300 million and 347 million manats. This year, the fund increased 367 million manat with total expenditures of the state budget equal to 18,433.5 mln.
Recall that this year the Presidential Reserve Fund gave funds to the EP of Ganja (AZN 5 million) and the Goygol region (2 million). -08B-