BAKU, Azerbaijan, December 11. This week, Azerbaijan's Parliament adopted the state budget for 2023, Trend reports.
According to the amendments made in the initial variant of the bill, both revenues and expenses of the state budget of Azerbaijan for next year will increase by 53 million manat ($31.18 million), respectively. The revenues will make up 30.7 billion manat ($18 billion), including 30 billion manat ($17.6 billion) for centralized revenues, and expenses – 33.35 billion manat ($19.62 billion).
Local revenues were approved in the amount of 756.98 million manat ($445.2 million), centralized expenses – 32.58 billion manat ($19.17 billion), and local expenses - 769.28 million manat ($452.5 million).
Meanwhile, Azerbaijan has increased the VAT refund for cashless payments this week. The relevant draft proposes to reduce VAT refunds during cash transactions from 10 to 5 percent and increase it from 15 to 17.5 percent for cashless payments in order to promote non-cash transactions.
Furthemore, Azerbaijan has redeemed Eurobonds ahead of schedule. The early purchase of a part (in the amount of $350 million) of public bonds (Eurobonds) traded by the Public Debt and Financial Liabilities Management Agency under the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Azerbaijan from November 30 to December 12, 2022 in the amount of $1.25 billion was completed.
In addition, amendments to the law on banks regarding the bank license revocation rules were discussed at the joint meeting of the Azerbaijani Parliament's Defense, Security and Counter-Corruption Committee and the Committee for Economic Policy, Industries and Enterprising on December 7.
Following the changes, Article 42 of this Law is amended, and a new paragraph (42.3) is added to it. The new paragraph prohibits opening accounts with fictitious names or anonymous accounts, accepting documents and property with fictitious names or anonymous storage in special premises, issuing anonymous deposit certificates, as well as providing anonymous bank books. The amendments were recommended for discussion at the plenary session of the Parliament.
Also, it was noted this week that the World Bank (WB), jointly with Azerbaijan, has implemented 49 projects worth $3.2 billion to date.
In addition, the implementation of technical assistance projects of the International Monetary Fund in Azerbaijan was discussed this week.