Azerbaijan, Baku, April 16 /Trend, M. Aliyev /
The checkups carried out by the Chamber of Accounts at the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAR) illustrate that SOFAR assets are placed very reliably, Chamber of Accounts Chairman Heydar Asadov reported on Friday. He was speaking at a plenary session of the Parliament of Azerbaijan during discussion of the Chamber's 2010 operation.
"Currently, 61 percent of SOFAR assets, which total $26.5 billion, are placed at funds with AAA rating, i.e. enjoy maximum protection whereas 17 percent are placed at funds with AA rating", said Asadov.
Though profitability rate of these assets is not high, it was necessary to protect the country's currency reserves as much as possible in the crisis period, according to him.
In 2010, the Chamber carried out 41 checkups in 2010 compared to 23 and 31 in 2008 and 2009, correspondingly.
As the 2010 checkups identified misuse of the amount of 2.318 million, this money was paid to the state budget, according to him.
"In the reported period, we tried either to increase the number of facilities subject to checkup or cover a larger number of spheres", Asadov reported.
"The identified shortages concerned largely state purchases, as a consequence of the wrong use of norms in the housing system, etc. The checkups did not reveal global scale embezzlements posing a menace to the security of the country", Asadov said.
According to him, serious violations were identified in the operation of the Sheki Culture Division where writings off and certain financial frauds were identified. The information concerning these violations was submitted to the Chief Prosecutor's Office and, as the Chamber of Accounts knows, prosecution is already underway.
"While we talked about efficiency of the use of budgetary assets earlier, optimization of budgetary expenditures and getting a higher state budget proficit are being examined worldwide", Asadov said.
According to the report, the audits by the Chamber of Accounts have allowed cutting receivables of state agencies and organizations by 1,395,000 million manat and prevented payables of 518,000 manat. Besides, there were charged extra taxes of 853,000 manat to be transferred to the state budget and earnings of 171,000 manat to be transferred to the State Social Security Fund.
In 2010, the Chamber of Accounts also carried out eight analytical undertakings.
Of the Chamber of Accounts' current report, the results of the audits cover 60 percent as compared to only 15-20 percent earlier, said Ziyad Samedzadeh, Chairman of the Parliament's Committee on Economic Policy.
"The triple increase of this indicator illustrates efficiency of the Chamber's work", he noted.
Following the results of the discussions, the Parliament adopted the Chamber of Accounts' report.
The official exchange rate is 0.7927 manat to $1.