Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova announced the seven-item agenda at the last plenum of the parliamentary spring session that was held on 31 May.

Item I was a draft resolution of the Milli Majlis: the legislature acting on the presentations given by the Head of State is authorised to appoint and dismiss members of the Board of the Central Bank in accordance with Paragraph 15, Part I, Article 95 of the Constitution of the Azerbaijan Republic. So, the President had submitted the nominations to the Milli Majlis and the latter was going to pass a relevant decision.

It was the chairman of the Economic Policy, Industries and Enterprising Committee Tahir Mirkishili who covered that item. He told the House about the work and practical background of the candidates, which were Rashad Tamraz oglu Orujov and Aliyar Gahraman oglu Mammadyarov. Mr Mirkishili also put across the relevant favourable opinion statement issued by his committee.

The draft resolution of the Milli Majlis appointing the CBA Board members was voted pro, after which the Assembly moved on to the first-reading 2021 Azerbaijan Republic State Budget Performance Bill.

It was, again, Tahir Mirkishili who gave a statement in this regard. He told the House that the draft law had been submitted together with the 2021 State Budget performance account in the time and form-wise compliance with the Budgetary System law and that both submissions had been composed appropriately and encompassed all the mandatory data. The 2021 State Budget, in turn, had been drawn up with due consideration given to the strategic priorities of development that President Ilham Aliyev had defined to the backdrop of socio-economic challenges and security issues accompanying global economic processes as well as the main parameters of the consolidated and state budgets – all in the context of the post-COVID-19 recovery efforts and the end of the Patriotic War, according to Mr Mirkishili.

All in all, the year 2021 had been successful inasmuch as the socio-economic development of the country is concerned. The anti-coronavirus vaccination done over the whole of the territory of the country and the gradual easing and, ultimately, removal of the restraints imposed due to the pandemic, coupled with the rising world-market crude oil prices had triggered the favourable external and internal macroeconomic environments which, by the end of the day, had brought about a faster-than-anticipated economic restoration. One of the effects of that situation was that the GDP had exceeded the level recorded in 2019. All the economic areas had been recovering rapidly last year. The added value generated by the oil and non-oil sectors had grown by 1.8% and 7.2% respectively whilst the GDP had risen to AZN 92.9 bn with a notable increase from the projected AZN 75.8 bn. The foreign debt had shrunk by US$ 685.8 mn from y/b 2021 to US$ 8,135 mn or 14.9% of the GDP by the year’s end. The inflation raving in the global economy had had its impact on Azerbaijan in the end, though, all for the fast-paced restoration and growth dynamics observed throughout the year. On the other hand, the steps taken to flesh up the anti-inflation trends had made it possible to avoid yet higher inflation figures. In general, the states of affairs in the country and abroad were favourable for the country during all the twelve months.

Mr Mirkishili moved on to the main 2021 State Budget performance parameters then. He told the House that the budget revenues had amounted to AZN 26,396.3 mn with a rise by AZN 969.3 mn or 3.8% from the 2021 forecast for AZN 25,427 mn. The non-oil sector had demonstrated an increase in revenues by 10.4%. The tax and the customs authorities and the other sources put together had accounted for 49.3%, 33.8% and 16.9% of the aggregate non-oil revenues whereas the oil-sector revenues had exceeded AZN 13,536.2 mn having fallen AZN 240 mn short of the forecast annual total. The State Tax Service and the State Customs Committee had collected AZN 8,529.200 thousand and AZN 4,343.0 mn consecutively. The returns on state property privatisation had added up to AZN 112.7 mn with an 83.4% increase from the year before last.  Furthermore, the checks done by the state financial supervision offices and the law enforcement authorities had recovered the total of AZN 60.8 mn for the Budget.

As for the expenditures of the last-year Budget, Mr Mirkishili continued, they had equalled AZN 27,422.4 mn at 96.1% of the annual plan. The current and capital expenses as well as the state debt/state liabilities servicing costs had accounted for 60.5%, 31.5% and 8% of that total correspondingly. The social spending had amounted AZN 10,296.7 mn having made 37.5% of the aggregate expenses.

AZN 261 mn had been allocated towards the costs of countering the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic whereas the actual dedicated spending had had to be AZN 806.8 mn.

The education, defence and security, melioration, food security and science spending items had been done to 96.7%, 99.2%, 98.7%, 97.3% and 84.6% respectively. As much as AZN 2,200.0 mn had been set aside for restoration and reconstruction of the de-occupied territories but AZN 2,178.4 mn or 99.0% of that subsidy total had been spent in the end, Tahir Mirkishili said.

When Mr Mirkishili was done speaking, the chairman of the Chamber of Accounts of the Azerbaijan Republic Vugar Gulmammadov presented the conclusion of his department on the Bill about the performance of the 2021 State Budget and the annual report that went with it. Mr Gulmammadov said that the Chamber had found both documents to be in compliance with the legal act criteria and the budgetary parameters well-founded and complete, which had been stated in the Chamber’s conclusion duly. Both the Bill and the annual report had been submitted in a timely manner; they contain the required information and indications whilst the quality and scope of the data contained in the report demonstrate a progressing improvement.

The work done to optimise the budgetary rules is cited in the report and this is commendable – as is the fact that the annual report has a sub-section about the suggestions contained in the conclusions of the Chamber of Accounts. The latter was done for the first time in a few years past. Furthermore, the documents indicate that the State Budget parameters are based on the socio-economic projections liable to alter from the influences of global economic challenges, and that the State Budget may be susceptible to such influences.

The study of the submitted information shows that the established spending and revenue targets had been attained in the main. With that, the Chamber had referred in its conclusion to the soundness and completeness of the state debt and budget deficit figures as quoted as well as that those figures matched the principal macro-parameters. In addition, the document includes the assessments of last year’s debtor liabilities and of the efficiency of several state procurement aspects. One can also find in the document the results of the supervision activities accomplished within the report period. Due attention had also been given to how the public funds released for state programmes and events had been expended – and the same is true of the spending of the funds allocated for the on-going restoration and reconstruction of the liberated territories, Mr Gulmammadov concluded.

Deliberations followed. Comments and remarks were made by the committee chairman Ahliman Amiraslanov and Tahir Rzayev as well as the MPs Hikmat Mammadov, Mahir Abbaszade, Elnur Allahverdiyev, Elshan Musayev, Azer Badamov, Fazil Mustafa, Elshad Mirbashir oglu, Elman Nasirov and Razi Nurullayev.

Then, the 2021 Azerbaijan Republic State Budget Performance Bill was approved in the first reading.

First Deputy Chair of the Milli Majlis/chairman of the Law Policy and State-Building Committee Ali Huseynli tabled the first-reading amendments to the Code of Administrative Procedure, the Criminal Code, the Code of Administrative Offences and the Law ‘On Citizens’ Applications’. That compendium had been drawn up in connexion with the enactment of the Law ‘On the Rules of Employment of the Legislative Initiative by the Citizens of the Azerbaijan Republic’ – the effective legislative acts need aligning with that law, Mr Huseynli explained.

It follows from Article 10 of the said law that persons in breach of its provisions shall be brought to account in the cases provided for in the Code of Administrative Offences and in the Criminal Code. Now, the tabled amendments are meant to fix the legislative grounds for such accountability as well as they are to typify it.

As regards the amendments to the Code of Administrative Procedure, their purpose is to regulate the specificities of court proceedings in lawsuits disputing decisions of the Central Elections Commission, to determine previous criminal records whilst the administrative disputes of this category are processed, to set the lawsuit processing deadlines and to clarify certain other matters.

And the amendments to the Law ‘On Citizens’ Applications’ are on the unifying side.

Comments and questions were made by the committee chairmen Siyavush Novruzov and Ziyafet Asgarov and by MP Sabir Rustamkhanli. The Bill was approved in the first reading after Ali Huseynli had answered those questions.

Speaker Sahiba Gafarova told the House then that the next 4 items on the agenda had been submitted to the Milli Majlis by the President and that they were interrelated topically. Those Bills, already scrutinised by the Law Policy and State-Building Committee and the Culture Committee, had to do with the amendments to the Law ‘On the National Archive Fund’ and emanated from them, according to Mrs Gafarova.

The chair of the Culture Committee Ganira Pashayeva informed the Assembly of the first-reading amendments to the Law ‘On the National Archive Fund’. As she did that, she mentioned the State Programme of Archive-Keeping Development for the years 2020-2025 that had been approved with the presidential decree dated 12 February 2020. She said that the Programme envisaged the drafting of bills meant to streamline the legislation on archive-keeping.

The amendments to the Law ‘On the National Archive Fund’ encompass improvements in the registration system of the NAF, identification of the new structure of the State Archiving Service System, the involvement of the designated executive authority in granting access to archival materials, the logistical support to archives and reinforcement of the social protection of the archives’ employees. A more advanced NAF document complement and production arrangement is proposed, as are a more productive use of archived documents for historical research and to social ends, the modernisation of the archive-keeping as a sector by implementing IT solutions and technologies, digitalising archived documents and creation of an integrated data system.

The Bill contains as many as 42 amendments to 13 articles, according to the committee chairman who drew the attention of the House to the specific amendments to the said articles.

Nizami Safarov of the Law Policy and State-Building mentioned the intended modification of several other legislative acts in connexion with the aforesaid amendments, and tabled the amendments and addenda to the Civil Code, the Code of Administrative Offences and the Law ‘On the State Registration of Legal Persons and the State Register’. All the three draft laws came up in the first reading.

Pursuant to the addendum to the Civil Code, a liquidation commission shall have what documents have been generated in the course of its own operation and that of the legal person being liquidated, which documents are classified as archival documents subject to the National Archive Fund Law, submitted to the appropriate unit of the State Archiving Service the closest to the known location of the legal person at issue.

The title and the disposition of Article 391 of the Code of Administrative Offences, originally entitled On Violations of the Legislation on the National Archival Fund, shall be in the new edition. Cautions and fines are to be introduced for physical and legal entities as well as office-holders for breaching the rules of including in the NAF archives, archival funds and document compendia or, conversely, of extracting them from the NAF or destroying them. The cautions and fines shall also apply where the NAF protective regulations are violated and where the deadlines (set in the NAF Law) for submission of archival-fund documents to the state archives for permanent storage are defaulted and for failure to observe the requirements regarding the content(s) and scope(s) of fund documents and, last but not least, for violation of the rules of using the NAF documents.

Regarding the Law ‘On the State Registration of Legal Persons and the State Register’, it was said that a certificate confirming the transmission of the fund documents generated by a legal entity being liquidated to that entity’s local State Archiving Service unit shall from the amendments’ enactment onwards be appended to the list of documents (in Article 16) that a liquidation commission is obliged to submit to the appropriate executive authority in order for the concerned legal entity to be excluded from the State Register. Such confirmatory certificates shall be issued by the above-said local units of the SAS.

The parliamentary committee chairman Tahir Rzayev and the MPs Sahib Aliyev, Aziz Alakbarov and Isa Habibbayli commented on the agenda item; they also made their suggestions. The head of the National Archive Department Asgar Rasulov responded to their comments.

Once the discussion was over, the Bills were voted through the first reading one by one.

Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova capped the plenum with a short review of the spring parliamentary session during which the Milli Majlis had met in plenary 13 times and had passed 70 laws and resolutions including 1 constitutional law. The constitutional powers of the Parliament had been discharged in full. The legislative foundation of the creative work and the reforms implemented under the guidance of President Ilham Aliyev of the Azerbaijan Republic had been made yet more robust and more streamlined.

The reports by the Cabinet of Ministers, the Chamber of Accounts, the National Co-ordinator of Combatting Human Trafficking, the Human Rights Commissioner and of the authority responsible for the administrative supervision of the operations of the municipalities had been heard at the spring-session plena.

Besides, fundamental steps had been taken to promote the international relations of the Parliament.

As many as 95 MPs had paid more than 50 trips to 28 countries; the delegations made up of our MPs had taken part in and spoken at both IRL and virtual meetings and gatherings.

Members of the Azerbaijani legislature had been amongst the monitors at the referendum held in Belarus, too.

The Chair of the Milli Majlis had paid official visits to 6 countries and taken a working trip to one country more. On the other hand, she had had meetings here at the Milli Majlis with the presidents, PMs, parliament speakers and deputy speakers as well as MPs from 15 countries and with delegations of 4 international organisations. Bilateral and multilateral inter-parliamentary connexions and other matters of interest had been brought up at all of those conversations.

Going further, Mrs Gafarova said that she had recounted all those visits and meetings to the MPs periodically at the sittings of the Milli Majlis.

She then reminded the House that the Parliament of Azerbaijan had concluded co-operation agreements with the legislative assemblies of two countries, adding that the Milli Majlis would soon be hosting an event of special magnitude – the Third General Conference of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Economic Co-operation Organisation, expected to be attended by more than 100 delegates.

The spring session of the Milli Majlis had been accomplished successfully, Mrs Gafarova said and thanked the MPs for their fruitful work.

Then, the Chair of the Milli Majlis declared the spring session closed and the national anthem of the Azerbaijan Republic was sounded to conclude the session’s last plenum.

The Press and Public Relations Department
The Milli Majlis