2023-09-01 19:35:22
Head of the Institute of Economic Analysis, Mohammad Talibli
I received interesting comments from the people I addressed with this question. Thanks to everyone for their thought provoking ideas.
Now I want to share my thoughts as an economist.
I have to apologize for the length of the text.
Let’s look at our situation and analyze it.
Of course, both proposals have a strong populist weight. Supposedly, when this happens, a whole nation comes together to revive Karabakh. As if everyone took a broom and a “lapadka” in their hands and hit the roads, Karabakh will flourish and become a place of flowers.
I think that in order to turn Karabakh into an attractive region to live in and not a laughing stock, the state should first of all have a clear conceptual vision and working mechanisms.
Experiences show that there is no specific responsibility in the work that everyone is engaged in, and this work is actually done by no one. Leaving aside the power of large state resources, Karabakh, built on the shoulders of citizens, will condition the administration that increases state resources but impoverishes citizens.
For this purpose, more than 10 billion manats have been spent in the last 3 years, and these expenses continue this year. So, 2.2 billion in 2021, 4.3 billion in 2022. and 5.2 billion in 2023. manats were spent. About 12 billion manats (11 billion 775 million manats) were allocated for the construction and installation projects in Karabakh, which was freed from occupation. More than 70 percent of these funds were spent on road construction and construction of airports.
The state should create such a favorable economic regime for foreign investors that the business projects of investors bring dynamism, resources, new jobs, and tax payments to the region without a great need for state budget resources.
For many years, the state budget, which has been receiving annual transfers of over 10 billion manats from the State Oil Fund, seems to have lost it. Karabakh will not be turned into a bog due to tax burdens.
Let’s not deceive ourselves. The income part of the state budget is already provided due to the payments of citizens, in addition, there is no need for a new type of tax “discovery” for the citizen. I will present several arguments to answer the question “why not”.
The income situation of minimum wage earners and vulnerable social groups in the country is clear. But even the income of working people does not allow them to be burdened with some abstract tax liability. When we analyze the income levels of working people, we encounter another paradoxical situation.
The average monthly salary in the country is 922 manats. This seems like a big number at first glance. However, this amount is the average monthly salary of 1.7 million wage earners (900,000 in the public sector and 800,000 in the private sector).
However, the median wage in our country is 459 manats. That means that 850,000 people who work for wages in the country, that is, those who work with a specific labor contract, receive a salary lower than 459 manats.
In the next report of the State Statistics Committee, it is noted that in 2022, 10.7 percent of salaried workers in the country – about 170 thousand people received a salary below the minimum wage (345 manats).
When you consider the low incomes hidden in these figures and the sensitivity of those working even within the working population, it is clear that the attempt to implement large-scale work with a new type of tax does not seem serious.
If those citizens protest that my salary is close to the minimum wage in the country (345 manats), somehow we go from one month to the next, if we blackmail them, they are traitors who don’t want Karabakh, I don’t know what…
In fact, if accountability on the state budget increases, efficiency increases and transparency becomes stronger, Karabakh will no longer need any additional resources!
The tax of the poor, the thinking that we have to build at the expense of the image of those working in the budget organization, is not the thinking of a rich and experienced state, but the thinking of a poor and populist person.
The poor man suffers from the pain of his foot, the rich man suffers from his shoes, and your eyes are on the poor man’s shoes…
#MONEY #BUILD #KARABAKH #Freedom