Gubad Ibadoglu made a speech about management of oil revenues in the international conference held in Beirut
The chairman of Economic Research Center (ERC) participated in the international conference on “Management of Revenues” organized in Beirut with support of Revenue Watch Institute. The representatives of Middle-East’s oil rich countries- Kuwait, Bahrain, Morocco, Iraq, Tunis, Yemen, Syria, Algeria, Libya, Egypt and also Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan participated in the conference. In the first day of the conference, the head of ERC made a presentation about “Oil Revenues Management Experience in Azerbaijan” and depicted the current environment in the management and distribution of oil revenues and additionally, Mr Gubad Ibadoglu disclosed some research findings of ERC on this topic.
By emphasizing lack of matured legal framework for management of regulating oil revenues process and fiscal rules, furthermore negative effects of central government intervention to corporate management system, Mr. Ibadoglu mentioned that until this time Azerbaijan received 65 billion dollars oil revenues and 35.2 billion dollars of it was already spent. He added that last year the return from the management of approximately 30 billion dollars of oil revenues was 215 million dollars or 0.7 percent of the total Amount. Mr. Ibadoglu discussed reasons of year by year downward trend in the rate of return from management of oil revenues and noted that rate of return in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and in 2011 was respectively 4.5%, 3.8%, 3.6%, 0.8% and 0.7%.
During the speech, by stressing successes from the implementation of Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and current challenges, Mr. Gubad Ibadoglu noted the importance of changes in this direction and addressed his suggestions to attention of participants.
In the same time, the head of ERC answered questions about participation of Civil Society Organizations and the parliament in the management process of oil revenues in Azerbaijan and opportunities of citizens in benefiting from these revenues.
ERC Public Relations Department