Azernews.Az

A senior Azerbaijani lawmaker has dismissed predictions that the country will face a financial crisis in 2012-2013.
Local media had claimed, quoting the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) report, that economic growth will be reversed in the country by 2012. Specifically, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is expected to decline by 1.7 percent that year and another 2.6 percent in 2013, the reports said.
Azer Amiraslanov, deputy chair of the parliamentary commission on economic policy and president of the Economic Reforms Foundation, said the reports had no merit.
"There is no financial crisis in store. On the contrary, the country's financial pillars will further strengthen themselves in 2012-2013," Amiraslanov told a press conference last week.
He emphasized that Azerbaijan's solvency is expected to increase in this period.
Amiraslanov confirmed the IMF's earlier statement, saying the reports had been distorted in the media.
"That report did not indicate any crisis or decline expected in Azerbaijan," he said, though he added that economic growth was expected to slow down in the coming years.
Amiraslanov emphasized that projections on a gradual slowdown in the GDP growth rate in the country "were not news" and this tendency was cited in the government's forecast as well.
"The country's economy will develop at a slower pace compared to the present period, and this is natural, according to both the Azerbaijani government and the World Bank."
Amiraslanov explained the decreasing growth rate by the reduction in Azerbaijan's oil production expected in the coming years.
"Prior to the IMF, the Azerbaijani government developed similar projections and included them in the 2008 budget package. Qualitative changes will simply take place in Azerbaijan's economic growth in the future. For instance, the share of the oil sector in GDP, which made up 59 per cent in 2007, will go down to 47 per cent in 2011, which indicates the non-oil sector will be increasingly developing in the country. Overall, no economic crisis is expected in Azerbaijan in the next five years."
Folowing media reports, the IMF said it had merely predicted a reduction in the GDP growth rate in Azerbaijan. "But our report did not say that the growth will be reversed by a decline," it said.
Amiraslanov went on to say that Azerbaijan would fill the ranks of high-income countries for GDP per capita in five years. He said the figure is expected to reach $12,915 in 2013. The indicator was only $2,469 in 2006.
Amiraslanov stressed that the IMF also predicts that per capita GDP in Azerbaijan will reach some $13,000 in 2013, with the figure constituting $7,500 in the non-oil sector, alone.
"This means that, beginning in that year, Azerbaijan will become a high-income country," the expert concluded.