Share of Azeri economy exceeds 83 % among South Caucasus economies

The share of the Azerbaijani economy among the South Caucasus countries in the first half of this year exceeded 83 %, the Azerbaijani Economic Development Minister, Shahin Mustafayev, said on Saturday at a meeting in Sumgayit industrial park with buyers and producers of competitive industrial products."So, if today Azerbaijan's GDP is $28.4 billion, Georgia's GDP hits $3.5 billion and Armenia's GDP - $2.2 billion," Trend quotes Mustafayev as saying. "Thus, the GDP accounting for Azerbaijan's non-oil sector is higher than the total GDP of both countries," he said.

The minister said that the non-oil sector in Azerbaijan increased by 8.5 percent in January-August 2011. Foreign trade turnover increased by 32 percent and reached $24 billion, where the share of exports accounted for $18 billion.

"The development is observed in all spheres of country's economy and confirmation of this is that in the next rating of Forbes, Azerbaijan ranked the first for the business environment among the CIS countries," said Mustafayev.