By His Excellency Mr Mir-Hamza Efendiyev, Ambassador of Azerbaijan to the Netherlands.
Azerbaijan has started promoting the ‘Made in Azerbaijan’ brand in foreign markets. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev approved the rule of defining and regulating the mechanism of paying a part of the expenditures from state budget, organizing export missions to foreign countries, exploring foreign markets and marketing activities abroad. Local companies will receive certificates and patents in foreign countries for export, research programs and projects for development of export.
The energy-rich country announced its intention to develop potential mechanisms and economic growth models with a view to adapt its own model to those of most advanced. Azerbaijani President described the 2016 year as year of economic reforms, which should lead the state of the economy in accordance with the requirements of the post-oil period. Regardless of the ongoing deep economic and financial crisis in the world, Azerbaijan is doing its best to protect the domestic economy against the negative repercussions. The main priorities of the new phase will be increase in competitiveness of the domestic economy.
Over the past 13 years, the gross domestic product has tripled. Significant steps to reduce unemployment and poverty have been taken. Nowadays, both unemployment and poverty are about 5 per cent in our country. A significant part of the Azerbaijani economy is connected with natural resources. The government’s main objective is to ensure macroeconomic stability and the normal rate of inflation. At the end of 2015, inflation was less than 4 percent. Azerbaijan’s economy is diversified, with the non-oil sector accounting for about 70 percent of the gross domestic product.
Azerbaijan, which is keen to ensure further economic growth through the non-oil sector, is currently engaged in the creation of its strategic road map, which is expected to become the main document of the economic strategy for the next ten years. The document will be comprehensive, as academic circles and the community were involved in its creation. The government is preparing a number of documents, which include a road map for the period of one year, the strategy of economic growth for 2016-2020 and improvement plan, as well as long-term vision till 2025 and target vision after 2025.
The State Agency for Public Services and Social Innovations (ASAN) serves as an excellent example of Azerbaijan’s institutional reform in the fight against corruption. This is a network of centers where government services are delivered in a unified and coordinated manner by highly skilled and motivated public servants. All of the services in the center are processed online. The six core principles of the ASAN are: being customer-centric, connecting up government, building capacity, delivering on its promise to the public, innovation and fighting against corruption. Currently, ASAN service provides 30 legal and 32 various functional services.
On the other hand, the directions of tax reforms approved in August 2016 will make it possible to apply more favorable value-added tax rates for the socially vulnerable layers of the population, reduce the tax burden on small and medium-sized business, resolve problems during taxation of trade operations. The tax reforms also implies reducing the tax burden. First of all, this will apply to small and medium entrepreneurs. Azerbaijani government has recently taken serious measures for the development of small and medium-sized business. Cancellation of all types of inspections of entrepreneurial activities for a period of two years in November 2015 is among such measures.
In recent years, Azerbaijan has paid importance to boost local production, allocating funds to both public and private sectors. An important role belongs to the factors related to economic reforms, which will continue to improve the business environment in the country.
The government continues to ensure the transparency of the economic and financial sector. Bilateral business forums, visit of the Minister of Economy Shahin Mustafayev to the Netherlands in 2015, and his Dutch counterpart Henk Kamp to Azerbaijan in 2016 established more solid basis for future cooperation. It is an interesting fact that more than hundred companies with Dutch capital are operating in Azerbaijan.
Planned visit of Azerbaijani Agriculture Minister Heydar Asadov to the Netherlands at the end of October 2016 will give an additional impetus for further cooperation. Introduction of the brand “Made in Azerbaijan” creates new opportunities for Dutch investors by introducing their know-how to Azerbaijani market, and therefore we invite Dutch entrepreneurs not to miss this opportunity.
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Photography by Azertac.
