Azernews.Az

By Aynur Jafarova

The assets of Azerbaijan's state oil fund SOFAZ, an entity that accumulates and manages the country's oil and gas revenues, increased by 42.5 times from 2003 to 2013, SOFAZ told Trend news agency on September 17.

At present, the assets of SOFAZ hit $34.68 billion while they amounted to $0.82 billion in 2003.

The biggest growth was registered in 2008. As of late 2008, SOFAZ's assets increased by 4.53 times (or by $8.74 billion) and hit $11.22 billion. For comparison, as of 2007 SOFAZ's assets hit $2.48 billion.

SOFAZ, which was established in December 1999, targets to help maintain macroeconomic stability in the country and to generate wealth for present and future generations.

At present, 25.22 percent of its investment portfolio is held in the bonds of agencies and international organizations, 12.2 percent in sovereign debt securities, 9.58 percent in financial bonds, 23.59 percent in corporate bonds, 24.22 percent in short-term commercial papers, 5.17 per cent in guaranteed bonds, 0.1 percent in municipal bonds, 6.91 percent in deposits and money market instruments, 2.76 percent in gold, 1.75 percent in real estate and 2.15 percent in shares.

Projected total cost (the average amount) of the SOFAZ investment portfolio for 2013 was set at 25.2 billion manats, while the figure was projected at the level of 23 billion manats in late 2012.