TODAY.AZ / Business

Azerbaijan's economy stands strong even after oil prices' fall, president says

28 April 2015 [18:10] - TODAY.AZ

Azerbaijan's economy stands strong even after oil prices fall, said Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, speaking at the opening of the 3rd Baku Global Shared Societies Forum in Azerbaijani capital on April 28.

"During the last 10 years, Azerbaijan's economy grew more than three times, we managed to diversify the economy and reduce the dependence on the energy sector," said Ilham Aliyev. "The energy sector makes up only about 30 percent of our GDP."

The Azerbaijani president said that the country's policy of diversification led to a substantial progress and even now, with the fall of the oil prices, Azerbaijan's economy in the first quarter of this year grew more than 5 percent.

Ilham Aliyev said that Azerbaijan managed to protect itself from the volatility of the oil prices, by implementing diversification policy, investments, creation of modern infrastructure and good business climate.

Speaking further, the president said Azerbaijan is a country open for foreign investments. In particular, Ilham Aliyev said that last year Azerbaijan received more than $27 billion worth of investment, with 30 percent of that being direct investments. He added that in total, Azerbaijan received more than $200 billion worth of investments during the country’s years of independence.

The president said that for foreign investors Azerbaijan is a very attractive country because of good business and investment climate.

He went on to say that Azerbaijan managed to almost eradicate unemployment, which is now less than 5 percent, and poverty's drop was a dramatic one - from 49 percent in 2003 to 5 percent in 2015.

"So economic and political reforms, at the same time very active social policy and social protection of the people, transparency in accumulating the wealth generated by energy development, and transparency in spending the state funds also played a every important role in our development," president Aliyev said.

With regards to the coming years, the president said Azerbaijan will concentrate more on diversification and the areas of attention of the government are modern technology, agriculture.

"Azerbaijan is already a country with a space industry," said the president. "We have two satellites and the country's rapid development of space industry is an indicator of our plans."

"Our population is growing, our economy is growing and economy should grow faster than population, otherwise, at certain point, we will face difficulties," he said. "Therefore, we should never feel relaxed, because we need to work hard to strengthen our statehood, independence."

He underlined that economic independence allows Azerbaijan to implement independent foreign policy.

"When you are weak and dependent, you will be influenced," he said. "Building a stronger economy, we've protected ourselves from any kind of external influence."

Ilham Aliyev said that for centuries Azerbaijan was part of other countries and empires, and today when the country is independent, and people enjoy their freedom, they see the advantages of such freedom and independence.

"We must protect our choice," he said. "Our choice is democracy, social welfare, peace among all the people of Azerbaijan, multiculturalism, interreligious dialogue, and cooperation with all the countries in the world, implementation of regional and continental projects."

/By Trend/

URL: http://www.today.az/news/business/140256.html

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