Press Review - January 29, 2018

The place and role of TANAP in the Southern Gas Corridor system, the losses caused to cotton farmers, and the theft from the state budget are the leading topics of today's press.

The newspaper Azerbaijan writes about the quick commissioning of the components of the Southern Gas Corridor. On two segments of the Shah Deniz-2 project and the South Caucasus Pipeline, the expansion work is nearing completion.

The work on the implementation of the last part of the TAP corridor exceeded 62%. Works on TANAR on the territory of Turkey are also being completed.

The website Azadliqinfo.az writes about the state administration, which turned the theft into a norm. As an example, the recent statement of the State Service of Financial Supervision of the Ministry of Finance is given.

Squandering in the country"s finance is not a new issue. No matter how much they write about this, the government pretends that it does not notice anything. It is enough to pay attention to the reports of the State Statistics Committee and the Accounts Chamber to see the scope and areas of squandering of public funds, the author writes.

In 2017, the aforementioned State Service revealed the appropriation in 10 organizations for a total of 2.3 million manat.

The newspaper Novoye Vremya writes about the unprofitability of cotton growing. At the root of the problem are low procurement prices and low yields. This caused losses to cotton farmers. However, officials earn millions on the export of "white gold".

As it turned out, less than a ton of cotton per hectare was harvested in Neftchala, Ujar, Samukh, Imishli, Hajigabul and others, which means the number of bankrupt farms is large.

The purchase price of cotton in Azerbaijan is low - three times less than in Iran and Turkey and 70% lower than in Kazakhstan.

Meanwhile, statistics show that the collection of cotton on December 13, 2017 already more than doubled the yield for 2016, and was more than ten times the index for the whole of 2015.