Azernews.Az

By Aynur Jafarova

The latest decision by Azerbaijan's Cabinet of Ministers to decrease the excise duty rates on oil products will not affect the forecasts on tax revenues to the state budget.

This was stated by Deputy Minister of Taxes Sahir Mammadkhanov at a press conference.

Addressing the conference participants on the ministry's plans, Mammakhanov said, decrease of excise duty may affect the incomes from some taxes but it will not affect the implementation of tax obligations. Meanwhile, any losses will be compensated by means of other spheres. For example, by increasing the taxes related with the upcoming increase of oil products' imports.

Based on the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers, the excise tax rates on AI-95 gasoline will decrease by 2.5 times, twice for AI-92 and AI-80 gasoline, 3.2 times for diesel fuel, 7.6 times for jet engine fuel, 5.4 times for naphtha, 3 times for liquefied gas, 7 times for motor fuel (DT-36), 5.2 times for motor fuel (DT-20), 49 times for furnace oil, and 16.4 times for bitumen (BN-60/90, BNB-60/70).

The Cabinet of Ministers made the decision in July 2013 to reduce the rate of the excise tax for petroleum coke, petroleum bitumen, and the residual products of oil, oil refining, and bitumen-containing minerals from $30 to one dollar per ton.

The import of these types of oil products is also exempt from value-added tax (VAT) and customs duties whose rate was previously set at 15 percent in Azerbaijan. Now it will be equal to zero percent.

Earlier, under a decision by the Azerbaijani government dated January 21, 2013, the imports of gasoline with 95 and 92 octane rating was exempted from customs duty and excise tax until June 2014, which was not due to the gasoline shortages in the country, but because of plans on suspending the catalytic cracking unit at the oil refinery named after Heydar Aliyev.

Duty rate was reduced from 15 percent to zero, and the excise duty rate on the imports of these gasoline brands was reduced from $250 to $1 per ton.