Baku / 24.05.17 / Turan: AZN 700 thousand was spent on the first shopping festival in Baku, and the income amounted to AZN 5.6 million, Culture and Tourism Minister Abulfas Garayev said, summing up the results of the festival.
According to the Minister, for the month 23,242 invoices were issued. The total turnover of invoices amounted to about 18.17 million manats, and the buyers were refunded VAT in the amount of 1.8 million manats.
The Minister assured that on 15 target countries, in April 2017, compared with the same period last year, the growth in the number of tourists was 23%, and in the first 10 days of May compared with the same period last year, the growth of tourists was 32%.
At the same time, the Minister noted that according to the results of the two shopping festivals, it is projected that the state budget will receive 40-50 million manats. In other words Garayev expects that the incomes of the second shopping festival will amount to about 35-45 million manats.
The Deputy Minister of Taxes Sahib Alekperov said that within the festival more than 3 thousand foreign citizens were returned VAT.
For our part, we note that the final figures of the festival, to put it mildly, are exaggerated. To begin with, no comparative analysis of the volume of invoices and turnover was made for them during the same period of 2016, when the festival was not held. Without it the picture is vague. Further, in the first two weeks, according to official statistics, slightly more than 8,000 invoices were drawn up, of which only 505 were drawn up for foreign citizens. And if you believe the final statistics, then buyers, including tourists, intensified in the second half of the festival, after which the number of invoices increased from 8 thousand to 23,242, and the number of invoices for foreigners increased from 505 to 3 thousand.
The general figure of the increase in the number of tourists also causes suspicion, since the usual visual monitoring of Baku streets showed that there were no more foreigners on the streets, there was not even an ordinary mass of tourists from the Arab countries, to which we have become accustomed for the past year. -71D-
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