Parliament hears Cabinet of Ministers' report for 2015
By Aynur Karimova
The Azerbaijani Parliament held a plenary session on March 15 to discuss a report on the activity of the country's Cabinet of Ministers in 2015.
Addressing the parliamentary session, Prime Minister Artur Rasizade said that significant actions on entrepreneurship development were taken in 2015.
Azerbaijan’s National Entrepreneurship Support Fund issued soft loans worth 1.7 billion manats ($1.04 million) to entrepreneurs between 2004 and 2015. Also, the Fund allocated around 250 million manats ($153.2 million) to more than 5,000 entrepreneurs on preferential terms.
“The number of businesses increased by 10.7 percent up to 84,000, while the number of individual entrepreneurs rose by 11 percent to 577,000 people during the year," he noted.
He further added that 16 billion manats ($9.8 billion) were transferred to the fixed capital in 2015, while more than 55 percent of this amount accounted for the non-oil sector.
The premier also spoke about Azerbaijan's inflation rate in 2015.
“The annual inflation rate was fixed at four percent,” he said. “Thus, despite the difficulties in the financial and banking sector, the Government and the Central Bank could keep the inflation at a single-digit level."
All social projects, the main state programs, priority projects were implemented through the state budget revenues in 2015, Rasizade added.
Speaking about the measures directed at the army building and strengthening of the material and technical base of the country’s Armed Forces, the prime minister said that Azerbaijan paid special attention to this issue.
He said that the government allocated 3.3 billion manats ($2.02 billion) to finance all the work done in the military field in 2015.
"New military units and camps were inaugurated for improving the living conditions of the military personnel. Some 1,500 officers' families were provided with houses. The volume of donations by different segments of society to the Armed Forces Assistance Fund increased and exceeded 70 million manats ($42.89 million)," Rasizade said.
He noted that these steps were taken due to the ongoing Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Rasizade added that the Armenian side, by dragging out time, is evading the problem’s solution, while international organizations have taken a position contrary to the international law on this issue.
“With this in mind, special attention was paid to strengthening of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces,” Rasizade said, adding this is proved by the response actions taken by the country’s Armed Forces to the Armenian sabotages.
The premier went on to add that the government also took important measures to improve the living conditions of refugees and internally displaced persons. In this regard, five more modern settlements were built and 15,000 IDPs were provided with new houses.
"In general, some 430 million manats ($263.45 million) were spent for the solution of problems of refugees and IDPs," he said.
The state also paid special attention to the improvement of living conditions of low-income families. "The average amount of targeted social assistance per family increased. In total, more than 197 million manats ($120.7 million) were spent for this purpose," he added.
In 2015, production of agricultural products increased by 6.6 percent compared to 2014. Azerbaijan achieved 11.3 percent increase in crop production and 2.5 percent increase in cattle breeding.
"Last year, the volume of export of fruit and vegetables increased by 7.2 percent, reaching $312 million," Rasizade noted.
In his remarks, Chairman of the Parliament Ogtay Asadov said that Azerbaijan remained an attractive country for investment making in 2015 as about 16 billion manats (12.07 billion) was invested in infrastructure and other projects.
Also, some 7.1 billion manats ($4.35 billion) was invested in oil sector and 8.8 billion manats ($5.39 billion) - in the non-oil sector.
Compulsory health insurance
In his remarks, MP Rashad Mahmudov said the introduction of compulsory health insurance in Azerbaijan should be started from the high-tech medical care.
"Currently, it is planned to start a pilot project for compulsory health insurance in a certain region. Depending on the results of implementation of the pilot project, its scope will be extended to other regions of the country. However, this approach can create a lot of problems, and in the end we will just lose time. The pilot project should be started from the high-tech medical care, which will primarily cover the whole country and all citizens who need specialized care," he stated.
Mahmudov believes that Azerbaijan can involve highly qualified specialists in the sphere of public health, promote the development of other fields of medicine by applying compulsory health insurance.
The MP also proposed to create a working group, which will include representatives from various government agencies, which will help the State Agency for compulsory health insurance to organize and implement the compulsory health insurance system in the country.
Devaluation
MP Ali Masimli, in turn, informed that the government is developing an offer to address the negative impacts of devaluation.
He said that the relevant document is being developed by various specialists involved in this work, and all the proposals made at the sessions of the Parliament will be envisaged in this document.
Later, the Parliament passed the government's report.
The Parliament also passed the law "On Licenses and Permits" in the third reading at a plenary session on March 15.
The bill "On implementation of investment projects in connection with the construction and infrastructure facilities on the basis of special funding" was approved in the second reading.
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Aynur Karimova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova
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