By Vestnik Kavkaza
Azerbaijani newspaper "Khalq Gazeti" published an interview with President Ilham Aliyev to Euronews TV on the international exhibition of telecommunications and information technologies "BakuTel - 2013". "Information technologies”, the president said, “are now one of the main directions in the development of the economy of Azerbaijan. This is a sector that generates ideas, promotes the general level of education in our country, contributes to the fact that we partake of the leading international scientific developments; this sector is especially a priority for the development of the non-oil sector of Azerbaijan".
This year has been declared in the country the Year of Information and Communication Technologies; this year, Azerbaijan's first artificial satellite was launched and fully outsourced to local experts. "We expect to continue this program: the second and third satellites will be launched in the coming years", the president assured. He said that information and communication technologies are developing in the regions. At the moment specialists are working on bringing broadband internet to every village in Azerbaijan, and the state will fund the project. The republic's leadership sets the task to make it not only a center of oil and gas operations, humanitarian cooperation, but also of modern technologies in the region. In this respect, the annual exhibition BakuTel is very important; it is increasing every year. "When we started”, Aliyev said, “we set a task that it should have the same international recognition as a the traditional oil exhibition, which essentially helped us to develop our oil and gas fields. BakuTel has the same function."
Coverage of information technologies across the country will also provide modern services to the population. The country implemented a system of providing public services, ASAN, which became a brand of Azerbaijan. Speaking of this, the president stressed the importance of such access to power structures. ASAN has a few features. The first one is the provision of advanced services. The second one is the fight against corruption, enhancing transparency and training . The system of ASAN already employs hundreds of volunteers, mostly young people who come, work for free and help people. This is a new form of relationship between government and citizens, between government officials and state institutions. It is no accident, despite the fact that less than a year has passed since the beginning of its work, that more than 500,000 people have addressed ASAN.
The head of state also talked about the TASIM project and its importance for the region and for Azerbaijan.
Information: The TASIM project (Trans-Eurasia information superhighway ) is a regionally-significant project, which aims to install a transnational fibre-optic link, which will bring together the major centers of information exchange in Europe and Asia, will run through China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Germany. In November 2008, during the ministerial meeting in Baku within the framework of the 14th International Exhibition of Communication and Information Technologies BakuTel, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies of Azerbaijan took the initiative on the TASIM project. In November of the same year in Baku the declaration of the project's implementation was adopted. On December 21, 2009, the 64th plenary meeting of the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution to establish a TASIM superhighway. The resolution, co-sponsored by the representatives of 30 countries, was adopted by consensus, and it noted the special role of Azerbaijan.
The President said that the project, as well as energy corridors, which today have already attracted the attention of Europe and other continents , and the intercontinental transport project of railway connection between Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, and those of communication, which are constructed in Azerbaijan due to e-services, fits into the overall concept of development, will bring people and countries together, and the country will get dividends for many years.
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According to "Voice of Armenia", on December 4, an agreement was signed on cooperation of the World Bank and the Eurasian Development Bank on the fund management of the Anti-Crisis Fund (ACF) of the Eurasian Economic Community on the preparation and implementation of investment projects in Armenia "Modernization of irrigation systems and the development of institutional capacities" for $40 million. A press release from the EDB noted that the project is of great importance for Armenia's agriculture - a key sector of the economy. Thanks to it, reliable water supply will be provided for about 10 % of the country's arable land, with 19% lower operating costs of water use. The beneficiaries of the project will be 28 % of all households in rural areas of Armenia. The GDP growth will be $200 million per year, or about 2% of GDP.
Moreover, the question of financing the modernization of the "Nairit" factory in Yerevan for the production of chloroprene rubber has been resolved. In December 2012 it was considered at the meeting of the Board of ACF. EDB simultaneously, as ACF manager, was handed the report by an engineering firm to evaluate the prospects for recovery of the plant.
According to the newspaper, a lot has changed since then: Armenia declared its choice of integration, and there is a potential strategic investor of "Nairit”. This concerns the major Russian industrial company "Rosneft", which intends to bring Pirelli to Armenia. That is, it goes not just for the restoration of Armenian production of synthetic rubber, but also the establishment of tire manufacturing. So it is not excluded that in the near future ACF will launch the third-largest project in the country. Armenia is feeling the positive effects of the decision on accession to the Customs Union.
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In Georgia, controversy sparked around the new draft Code of Self-Government approved by the government, which includes a number of innovations, in particular the direct election of mayors and municipalities, increasing the number of self-governing cities to 17, establishing control over the boards and administrations of Tbilisi city council of governors, as well as an increasing the number of municipalities from 69 to 120. The Code also provides for granting the status of a self-governing to all the cities on the territory of which there are more than 15 thousand inhabitants .
According to The Georgian Times, the opposition spoke against the adoption of the Code; it believes that the document needs to be improved, due to the fact that, in their opinion, the excessive decentralization of power at the regional level is fraught with separatist sentiments. Leader of "Democratic Movement - United Georgia" Nino Burjanadze said that the bill contains serious threats to national security and national interests.
Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia Ilia II also expressed opposition to the project. According to him, this document contains threats of the disintegration of Georgia: " We will never accept this and will do everything to ensure that this is not true. Georgia has been and will be one nation, one country. We must remember that when there was strong leadership and a whole country, Georgia was strong. According to our opinion, each district must be directly related to our leadership. The authorities must be aware of the problems that exist in the area. This does not require mediators. The government itself must consider the needs of each district. Our leadership should try to resolve the problem that exists in a particular area”. The patriarch called on the parliament not to rush into this decision and to enable citizens to take a look at it.
The article said that some members of the ruling coalition and non-governmental organizations felt that such statements by an authoritative person in Georgia can seriously harm reforms and called for their implementation, which, in their opinion, will bring Georgia closer to the European model of the state. Chairman of Parliament David Usupashvili met with the patriarch, and after the meeting, one of the initiators of the reform, the Minister of Infrastructure and Regional Development David Narmani, informed that the consultations on the bill will continue, the original form will undergo a number of changes, and the meeting will submit to the Parliament an improved version of the Code .
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"From private farms to Agrocomplex" such a program was developed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of Dagestan to implement the presidential projects "Efficiency of Agriculture". As reported by "Dagestani Pravda", currently in many localities all agricultural activity is concentrated in personal and peasant (farm) households, which are over 400 thousand, and they remain the only source of employment in rural families. About 43 thousand of them received land for organization of farms.
The newspaper says that in the post-perestroika period only about 200 out of 682 large and medium-sized farms have maintained their potential. Most did not survive the competition in the transition to the new market relations and ceased to function effectively. The land was alienated, and the equipment was sold off. Due to lack of funds farms ceased to purchase quality seeds for sowing , fertilizers, agricultural machinery; reclamation network was in disrepair, and elementary agricultural cropping was not applied. In this regard, the inefficiently used land was transferred to peasant and individual farms, which are mainly cultivating vegetables, melons and potatoes. Thus, during the years of agrarian reform the agriculture went on the rails of small-scale production based on inefficient manual labor, self-oriented agricultural production for marketing purposes. As a result, today in the agricultural organizations of the republic only about 10% of the needed agricultural products are produced.
The "Efficiency of Agriculture" project, which reflects the 15 main areas of agribusiness development, is intended to bring it to a new level of intensive development and to solve the problem of providing the population of the republic with food resources of its own production. The emphasis is on the creation of large holdings and corporations, investors who have the ability to invest for the introduction of modern technology and modernization.
An important role in the project is given to the processing industry. The republic believes that processing of agricultural raw materials should be the factor that will boost all of agribusiness. The publication states that a new model of cluster development of viticulture, providing incentives for dealing with vineyards by investors, is being introduced. Wine and brandy factories started practicing cultivation of their own vineyards for processing and providing financial assistance to vineyards. They have already signed an agreement to get land with total area of 2320 hectares. Work is under way to raise the plantage and prepare the ground for spring planting in 2014.
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The "Ingushetia" Newspaper reports that in the Malgobek district a new meat and dairy complex is being built, which should enter into operation before the end of 2014. The article states that the livestock sector of the republic as a result of ill-conceived reforms of the 1990s had collapsed, causing livestock to decrease significantly. Today the state unitary enterprises in total have only a little more than 1,000 head of cattle, 90% of which are fattened, and there is no dairy herd at all. The unfinished meat and dairy complex will become a platform for the revival of livestock for not only meat but also dairy farms. The average annual number of cattle in the dairy sector, when it works at full capacity, must be within 2600-2800 head.
With the commissioning of the complex on a regular basis it will employ about 100 people with a solid salary, which, according to the author, should ease the tension on the labor market in the area. In addition, the dairy market of the republic, where today products from neighboring regions dominate, will have its own, high-quality, cheaper products from Ingushetia.
