Azeri state oil fund’s assets up 5% in first six months

Azerbaijan’s State Oil Fund (SOFAZ)has said its assets grew to $37.6 billion in the first half of the year from $35.8billion at the end of 2013.

During the January-June period,SOFAZ received 6.5 billion manat from oil and gassales and spent 5.16 billion manat, most of which (4.88 billion manat) wastransferred to the state budget.

SOFAZ also spent 177.3million manat on construction of new houses for refugees from the Karabakh war with Armenia.

A further 11 million manatwas allocated for reconstruction of the Samur-Absheron irrigation system, 19.6million manat was earmarked for construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railwaylink.

SOFAZ allocated 5.2million to pay for the education of young Azeris at foreign universities; 40million manat was used to finance shares belonging to the state in ajoint-stock company established to manage projects within the second phase of the Shah-Deniz project.

The fund’s administrative and operational expenses during the periodamounted to 26.2 million manats.

Bakudaily.az