SOCAR increases payment to SSPF by 8% in 2017

Baku. 19 January. REPORT.AZ/ The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) has paid 155.984 mln AZN to the State Social Protection Fund in 2017.

Report informs referring to SOCAR, this figure is more by 8% than in 2016.

SOCAR has paid 1 511,033 mln AZN to the state budget in 2017. The company's budget payments increased by 115, 577 mln AZN, namely 8.3% in comparison with the previous year.

"Increase in SOCAR payments to the state budget is one of the indicators of the company's stable financial status", statement said.

Suleyman Gasimov, Vice President of the company for Economic Issues, said that SOCAR moved on the strategic direction determined by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and continued to expand and diversify its portfolio of operations in recent years: "International projects we carried out, investments inside the country and outside years ago had a positive impact on the current financial results of the company and created favorable background to ensure sustainable and growing line of payments to the state budget".

Notably, based on the strategic development strategy set up a few years ago, SOCAR has taken significant steps toward balancing its sources of revenue by expanding its activities in the petrochemical and oil and gas processing industries. Against the backdrop of sharp decline in crude oil prices in recent years, exposure to lower volatility of petrochemical products had a positive impact on the company's revenues. As a result, SOCAR managed to overcome the effects of the global energy industry crisis and achieved to end 2016 and 2017 with profit.