Press Review 01/25/2017

Expanding the scope of activities of ASAN Khidmet, the squandering of the budget, and the inefficiency of the banking system are the leading topics of today's press.

The newspaper Azerbaijan writes about the extension of the field of activity of ASAN Khidmet, which has 12 offices now. President Aliyev personally attended their opening.

 From the 12 offices, 6 are in the regions. The newspaper writes about the opening of ASAN Utilities, which provides 45 types of service. It employs 85 staff and 20 volunteers.

The website Azadliq.info published an article, which talks about the use of 4 billion manat per month by the government. The economist Nemat Aliyev noted that only in December from the state budget about AZN 4 billion was spent, almost 21% of the total budget. According to the expert, for 11 months of 2016 the average monthly consumption was 1 billion 266 million manat. There is a serious need to conduct an audit in the Ministry of Finance, the author believes.

Echo has published an article about the refusal of business structures of Azerbaijan to move to cashless payments due to high taxes and shaky banking system.

Therefore, businesses are looking for ways to circumvent the law ‘On non-cash payments.’ This law severely restricts the opportunities of doing business in cash.

In theory this should lead to an increase in non-cash transactions and enhance tax collection volume. The government has also provided an amendment to the Tax Code, according to which in cashing money by a legal entity 1% of the total amount is taken as a tax.

All these changes in the law were very much needed, but much too late. This should have been done a few years ago, when the banking system was all right.

Novoye Vremya has published an article about the loss of more than 70% of foreign exchange reserves by the Central Bank. Not the least role in this is played by negligence of the bankers, including the chief of the Central Bank Elman Rustamov.  –0---