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Akbar Novruz

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Receivables in Azerbaijan grew at a faster pace than state budget expenditures in 2025, increasing their share in overall budget spending, according to the Chamber of Accounts’ opinion on the draft law on the implementation of the 2025 state budget, AzerNEWS reports.

The report states that receivables increased by AZN 1.019 billion ($599.5 million) or 17% during the year, reaching AZN 7.01 billion ($4.12 billion). This growth exceeded the increase in state budget expenditures by AZN 128.3 million ($75.5 million) and by 14.6 percentage points.

Against the backdrop of a relatively modest rise in state budget expenditures of 2.4% in 2025, the share of receivables in total budget spending increased by 2.3 percentage points, reaching 18.2%.

According to the Chamber of Accounts, the net increase in receivables reflects the difference between newly incurred debts and those settled during the year. This indicates that at least a portion of funds allocated from the state budget to institutions in 2025 was not converted into actual expenditures, resulting in a wider gap between the cash execution and actual execution of budget spending.

The report notes that the share of receivables in state budget expenditures has more than doubled since 2020, rising from 7.8% to 18.2%.

The Chamber also emphasized that receivables are cumulative in nature, meaning that the year-end figure is shaped by both the repayment of existing debts and the creation of new obligations. It added that the reported amount does not include projects financed through foreign loans, transfers from the state budget to other budgets, or extra-budgetary expenditures of public institutions.

In addition, external state financial control measures have identified cases where organizations failed to record receivables properly, recorded them incorrectly, or closed receivables without supporting documentation. According to the Chamber of Accounts, these findings suggest that the actual volume of advance payments and receivables may be higher than officially reported.