DUSHANBE, April 20, Asia-Plus — In January-March 2007, Tajik state-run insurance company, Tojiksughurta, has collected some 9 million somonis in insurance fees, concluding 152,000 insurance contracts with physical and juridical entities, the company director general Muhibali Safarov announced at a news conference in Dushanbe on April 19.
“It is more than a half amount of insurance fees collected during the entire year of 2006, when we collected 17 million somonis in fees, concluding 520,000 insurance contracts,” Safarov said.
Commenting on this situation, the Tojiksughurta deputy director Nematullo Mouminov said in an interview with Asia-Plus that increase has resulted, most likely, from the fact that large companies such as Tajik national air carrier TajikAir and open joint-stock company Sangtuda HPS-1 have become clients of Tojiksughurta over the report period. “They accounts for more than 30 percent (3.5 million somonis) of a total amount of insurance fees collected in January-March,” Mouminov said.
According to the state service for insurance supervision of the Ministry of Finance (MoF), there are 16 type of obligatory insurance in Tajikistan, including insurance of passengers, insurance of civil servants, insurance against fire, etc. There are also types of voluntary insurance such as auto insurance, life insurance, medical savings insurance for persons traveling abroad, etc.
According to the Tojiksughurta head, the obligatory insurance has accounted for 60 percent of contracts concluded in over the first quarter of the year, which is 16.5 percent fewer than in January-March 2006, and the voluntary insurance has accounted for 40 percent against 23.1 percent in January-March 2006.
According to the State Committee for Statistics, 14 licensed insurance companies with a total authorized capital of more than 10.4 million somonis now operate in Tajikistan. Two of them are state-run.
Tajikistan’s largest insurance companies are Investgosstrakh with a capital of 3.5 million somonis, Orien Insurance with a capital of 3.3 million somonis and Tojiksughurta.
The Investgosstrakh deputy chairman Yusuf Chulibayev told Asia-Plus that his company had collected insurance fees for 481,628 somonis over the past three months, which is 1.3 times more than in the same period of last year, when it collected 367,144 somonis in insurance fees. “Premiums paid to clients over the report period have totaled some 38,000 somonis, while in January-March 2006 we paid premiums for a total of 11,600 somonis,” Chulibayev said.
Iskandar Sharipov, the acting director of Orien Insurance, said that over the first quarter of 2007, the company had concluded contracts on all types of insurance for a total amount of some 25,500 somonis, which is 2.6 times more than in the same period of last year.
He added that compared to January-March 2006 the amount of auto insurance fees has increased more than 4 times and totaled 39,357 somonis (in the first quarter of last year, the company had collected auto insurance fees for a total amount of 9,756 somonis).
In the meantime, according to the State Committee for Statistics, all the Tajik insurance companies last year concluded more than 832,000 contracts for some 70, million somonis and paid 7.7 million somonis in premiums.
