Azernews.Az

By Amina Nazarli

The government of Azerbaijan continues to encourage local entrepreneurship, as some 5,243 businessmen received loans worth 248.5 million manat (more than $158 million) on favorable terms from National Entrepreneurship Support Fund in 2015.

The Fund has allocated loans for development of such areas as animal husbandry, horticulture, plant growing, tea growing, beekeeping and many others.

Moreover, the loans allowed to create enterprises for production of building materials, processing of meat and milk farms, poultry plants, cattle-breeding complexes and grain warehouse in the regions.

These measures not only positively affected development of the non-oil sector, but also contributed to creating new job opportunities, as the projects allowed to open about 12,600 work places.

The country’s government supports its entrepreneurs by allocating preferential loans from the NFES, established in 1992 to fund investment projects in different regions of Azerbaijan. The Fund provides entrepreneurs with loans via authorized banks and non-bank credit organizations.

Overall, a total of 46 business forums dedicated to the allocation of preferential loans to the entrepreneurs and attended by around 4,000 people were held last year.

NFES Executive Director Shirzad Abdullayev noted that this year’s priority will be financing of logistics centers, the specialized "green market", agro-parks, facilities for breeding cattle and greenhouses, large farms and others.

At the recent Cabinet meeting dedicated to the social and economic development in 2015 and the objectives for the future, President Ilham Aliyev said that GDP grew by more than one percent, industrial production by 2.4 percent and non-oil industry by 8.4 percent in the country.

The president noted that the economy's diversification and development of the non-oil sector will be the main priorities of the economy in 2016.

“I am sure we will have even greater success this year in this direction,” he said. “In general, the structure of our GDP changes in a positive way. The weight of non-oil sector is growing.”

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli

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