November 06, 2012, Baku
Economic Research Center (ERC) published “Management of accounting policy on the basis of national accounting standards” book. This book is published within the framework of “ Strategic planning, budget preparation and improvement transparency and accountability in the field of financial management within 10 municipalities of Northern region of Azerbaijan” funded by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).
ERC organized round table dedicated to the presentation of this book on November 6, 2012. Relevant state agencies, parliament, international organizations, Media representatives, including local experts and municipality members were represented in this event. The member of ERC Board of Management Gubad Ibadoglu delivered opening remarks and informed the invitees about the accomplished activities in northern region, factors helped to publish the book and also presented writer of the book to the audience. Afterwards, Catarine Lampe, the group leader of GIZ’s local self-governance program on Azerbaijan, emphasized that his organization is cooperating with ERC for about two years, especially their joint activities in the field of financial-accounting in 10 municipalities of northern regions of Azerbaijan: Good financial management is a broad topic. For me this means both transparency and accountability”.
The author of this book, member of Chamber of Audits Altay Jafarov presented his book to the attendees. He noted that this book is published aiming to eliminate current contradictory issues in the field of accounting conduction in municipalities: “ We often conduct audits in municipalities and we observe serious problems in this area”. The expert underlined that the principles on establishing exemplary accounting policy in municipalities, the rules on conducting accounting on the basis of national accounting policy were covered in this book. In addition, models on conducting accounting policy in municipalities, relevant samples as well as analytic and synthetic accounting were among issues elucidated in published book. Besides, memorial order, grouping and schemes, reporting templates of municipalities, including examples covering reporting templates were comprehensively covered.
After the presentation the chairman of Support for Economic Initiatives Azer Mehtiyev specified gaps in accounting policy of municipalities. According to him, this book should be considered valuable asset for the Ministry of Finance, Department of the Ministry of Finance on municipalities, universities coaching municipality fields, including for municipalities per se as well: “ From this point of view, it is necessary to increase the publication quantity of this book”.
Member of Parliament Tahir Rzayev estimated that ERC has established effective cooperation with municipalities, and that its proposals and recommendations are stemmed from real cases: “Municipalities are young structures and therefore we should all support them. However, the situation in Azerbaijan was distorted within recent report released based on the charter of European Union on local self-governance. Certainly there are issues in this field, however, there are activities implementing to alleviate them and we should not deny this factor. Based on this, there were considerable hikes on financial inputs of municipalities starting from last year”
At the meeting, representatives from the Ministry of Finance, Chamber of Audits, OSCE, OSI-Assistance Foundation and civil society as well.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               PR Department of ERC

 Economic Research Center conducted a presentation of “Azerbaijani civil society: national agenda for changes” document, which was prepared within its “Civil society strengthening” project implemented with the financial support of Open Society Institute, Budapest office and German Marshall Fund for local NGOs in Sheki and Ganja cities respectively on 09th of August 2012 and 10th of August 2012. The presentation which was organized at conference hall of Uluchay Socio-Economic Development Center in Sheki on August 09 was attended by the leaders of around 10 active NGOs. During discussion, the project coordinator – Mr.Gubad Ibadoglu made presentations on “Current state of civil society in Azerbaijan” and “Azerbaijani civil society: national agenda for changes”. Following both presentations, the national agenda was heard in sections. The participants expressed their anxiety of inactivity of more than 30 NGOs despite 42 NGOs in Sheki have public registration. Same time, acting NGOs complained of donors’ paying little attention to the NGOs in the regions. Besides, the local NGOs forwarded initiatives on simplification of public registration of NGOs, establishment of registry offices in the regions, elimination of the procedure of notary authorization of contract copy for registration of grant agreements, simplification of reporting formats submitted to the ministry of finance, and security of the property right to the proposals of NGOs. The discussions decided to add the proposals of local NGOs to the national agenda. The presentation which was organized at conference hall of “Perfect citizen” social union in Ganja city on August 10 was attended by the representatives of around 15 local NGOs. As in Sheki, the same agenda was followed in Ganja presentation. Here, some local NGOs made some comments during discussion of the national agenda.