AZE.US
Natig Jafarli, chairman of Azerbaijan’s REAL party, has criticized the State Social Protection Fund, or DSMF, after it announced a tender to lease office space for its central finance and accounting branch for 1,037,520 manats.
In a Facebook post, Jafarli said the fund was originally presented by government officials as a structure that would eventually become self-financing and no longer rely on transfers from the state budget. Instead, he argued, the opposite has happened.
According to figures cited by Jafarli, DSMF is expected to receive 1.7 billion manats in subsidies from the state budget in 2026. The fund’s total budget is projected at 8.323 billion manats, while expenditures are expected to reach 8.483 billion manats.
He said 8.196 billion manats, or 96.6% of total spending, is set to go toward payments to the population. Another 287 million manats is expected to cover operational and current expenses, including rent, technical infrastructure, and other administrative costs.
Jafarli focused particular attention on the newly announced office lease tender. If the contract is annual, he said, the monthly rent would come to 86,460 manats.
He questioned why a fund that remains dependent on budget support would lease office space at that price when the state already has land and buildings that could be allocated for such needs. In his view, the government could either construct a building within the equivalent of two or three years of rent payments or transfer an existing state-owned property to the fund, saving around 1 million manats.
Jafarli also linked the issue to a broader criticism of the pension system, arguing that many citizens die before reaching retirement age and effectively lose the benefit of the funds accumulated in their name, while the institution managing social protection continues to spend heavily on administration.
His comments add to a wider debate over the long-term sustainability of Azerbaijan’s pension and social protection system, especially as demographic pressures grow and the fund remains reliant on budget transfers.
AZE.US