Ilham Aliyev: "Azerbaijan doesn't need close economic integration with anyone"

"Based on competitiveness, Azerbaijan's economy is on the 37th place in the world and first among the CIS countries," President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said yesterday during the round table "Hidden Problems of Eurasia" at the Munich Security Conference, the head of the European Office of Vestnik Kavkaza Orkhan Sattarov reports.

"We are comfortable in current conditions. Azerbaijan is a country with self-sufficient economy. This year, the Davos Economic Forum published a report on the developing countries, and we share the first-second place with Lithuania. Economic situation in Azerbaijan is positive, we have a very low level of government debt - less than 20% of GDP. Our foreign-exchange reserves are five times greater than our external debt. In other words, we can pay all of our debts in one week, which demonstrates the potential of our economy," Aliyev said.

Based on this, according to him, right now Azerbaijan doesn't need close economic integration: "When you integrate, you hope to get more benefits, more opportunities for development. We don't need this right now. We have self-sufficient economy."

Ilham Aliyev receives EU delegation in Baku

The same applies to cooperation with European institutions: "We were and are one of the six member countries of the Eastern Partnership, but we didn't sign an association agreement (like Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova did). On February 7 we began negotiations with the European Commission, after preparing a draft agreement - these are our proposals to the European Commission. It was the first time in the history of the European Commission when other country proposes a draft agreement, and we received such a mandate. The agreement must be based on nine agreements and memorandums, already signed and adopted by the EU institutions. In other words, Azerbaijan already has a strategic partnership with one third of the EU members."

"Our future economic plans depend on our national interests. So right now we have no plans to join any new international organization," Ilham Aliyev concluded