Ilham Aliyev: Deep economic reforms await Azerbaijan in 2016

This year, deep economic reforms will be carried out in Azerbaijan, which will allow to increase the budget revenues, even in conditions of decreasing world oil prices, the President of the Republic Ilham Aliyev stated, speaking at a meeting of the government of the country, held yesterday, which was dedicated to summarizing the results of the first quarter.

"In the first quarter, the economic reforms were carried out at an even faster pace. In general, I must mention that 2016 will be a year of deep economic reforms. Since the beginning of this year we have been working very actively in this direction. We have signed and adopted many orders, laws. The improvement of the business environment, increase of our export potential and attraction of foreign investments to Azerbaijan, increase of local production – we made very serious decisions in all of these directions. Financial discipline, transparency – I want to say that additional measures will be taken in this direction in the future," Trend quotes him as saying.

"The entire economic and financial sector in Azerbaijan, based on the experience of leading countries, should be developed on the basis of the most progressive principles. First of all, it is necessary to improve control mechanisms, transparency should be fully ensured. Thus, our revenues will increase and should increase in spite of the fact that oil prices have drastically decreased and are still at a very low level. This, of course, has a serious impact on our revenues. However, I believe that through the development of the non-oil sector we will be able to successfully get out of this situation," the president stressed.

The head of state complained that "the economic indicators of the first quarter are not very positive. GDP decreased. And this is natural. We expected this. But I think that within a year GDP should see improvements. At least, we are striving and we will strive for this. This is indicated by the fact that in the first quarter the non-oil industry in Azerbaijan increased by more than five percent. This suggests that the reduction of GDP, first of all, is due to the fall in oil prices and the situation arising in connection with this. Of course, our revenues have declined. Investments made by the state have decreased. We, of course, take this situation into account," Ilham Aliyev noted.

"But the growth of the non-oil industry by more than 5%, of course, is an indicator that gives great hope for a more rapid development of the non-oil sector in Azerbaijan. Today the non-oil sector is the main part of the economy of Azerbaijan. We have achieved this, and in the future, of course, we have to try to make the non-oil sector even more important in our export structure," he said.