The State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan has placed a deposit for 1 billion euros in the Central Bank of Turkey /UPDATED/

Baku/28.01.2022/ Turan: The State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAR) has placed a deposit in the amount of 1 billion euros with the Central Bank of Turkey.

According to Vesti.az with reference to SOFAZ, the funds were placed for a period of 6 months. The deal closed on January 27th. "This investment, carried out within the framework of SOFAZ's investment strategy, will make a positive contribution to financial stability in Turkey," the report says.

SOFAZ was established by the Decree of the President of Azerbaijan dated December 29, 1999.

The Fund accumulates income from the implementation of oil and gas contracts, in particular, from the sale of profitable state oil, transit tariffs for the transportation of oil and gas through the country, from the lease of state property.

The Foundation is accountable to the President of the country.

For January 1, 2022, the assets of SOFAZ amounted to $45 billion 25.1 million, which is 3.35% more than as of January 1, 2021.

Since its inception, the fund's income from investment activities has amounted to $10.2 billion, of which $8.9 billion has been received over the past 10 years.

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2022 January 28 (Friday) 16:29:51

Will Baku and Ankara make payments in national currency?

Baku/28.01.22/Turan: The head of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan denied reports that Azerbaijan is preparing to carry out a currency swap with Turkey for 1 billion euros (1.14 billion dollars). In practice, this means the exchange of these funds for the corresponding amount of Turkish lira. At today's rate, this means actually buying more than 15 billion liras from Turkey, eported by several foreign media at once over the past two weeks. However, on January 29, the head of the Central Bank, Elmar Rustamov, said at a press conference in Baku: "The central banks of Azerbaijan and Turkey are not conducting any negotiations on this issue."

"We are negotiating with Turkey on the creation of a mechanism of payments in the national currency and are trying to eliminate some technical problems," he said.

Earlier, unnamed sources told Bloomberg that instead of exchanging currencies, Azerbaijan will open a deposit account for 1 billion euros in the Central Bank of Turkey.

Reuters also reported last month that Turkey was close to signing a currency swap deal with Baku.

Turkey is in dire need of financial support amid a record depreciation of the lira against the US dollar. Turkey's central bank's net international reserves fell to minus $56 billion last month, the lowest since 2002. -02D-