From Islamic solidarity to a democratic republic

Concerning the results of the past year, the president's speech was built on the following modules:

-Stability and safety

-Macroeconomic stability

- The non-oil sector

-Energetic sector

-Transcontinental transport projects

-The Karabakh conflict

-The year of Islamic solidarity.

This time the president did not change the tradition of the date of the meeting, which in recent years was held on January 10. Thus, he apparently makes it clear that everything is stable in the country. In this sense, it was not by chance that he began to speak on the topic of stability and security, as before, strengthening the importance of these factors, the presence of wars and conflicts in the world around Azerbaijan. But it should be noted that this topic was not as hypertrophied as in the previous troubled years.

Another important point of this series was evident: the European Union and other European structures were not represented as institutions that might not be interested in stability. This time they were characterized as structures that acted on the side of Azerbaijan in its painful issue - the Karabakh conflict.

From the speech of Aliyev: "In the Declaration adopted at the end of the year at the summit of the Eastern Partnership" of the European Union, the European Union unequivocally supported the territorial integrity, the sovereignty of the member countries of the Eastern Partnership." This was another blow to aggressive Armenia. This is a manifestation of justice and at the same time demonstrates that today European structures, world centers demonstrate a more positive approach both in connection with the Armenian-Azerbaijani, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and with respect to the processes in the world as a whole. "

At the end of this topic, it became clear from Aliyev's speech that, firstly, Azerbaijan will not deviate from the principle of territorial integrity in the process of conflict settlement, and the second, will continue to build up a military argument in the Karabakh negotiating subject.

As for the economy itself, as the president stated in the preamble of his speech, "in 2017 our country developed rapidly and successfully". As an argument for supporters of a different point of view, Aliyev appealed to the ratings of the Davos World Economic Forum, which stated the rise of Azerbaijan in two stages - 35th in the world ranking of competitiveness in 2017.

From Aliyev's speech: "Our non-oil sector has grown, the growth here is 2.5%, the non-oil sector of our industry increased by 3.6%, and agriculture - by 4.1%." Our foreign exchange reserves increased. Last year in our country many important infrastructure and social projects were implemented, these projects require large sums of money, but in 2017 our foreign exchange reserves increased by 4.5 billion dollars and now make up about 42 billion dollars. 14.6 billion dollars. "

As important major projects, the extension of the contract for the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli field until 2050, as well as the transcontinental transport projects Baku-Tbilisi-Kars, linking Europe and Asia and the North-South, closing the railway communications between Russia and Iran, were named as important large projects.

However, from the point of view of independent experts, the past year has not been so rosy. The economic background of 2017 was very controversial. The crisis was never recognized. The economy grew only 0.3%. GDP fell by 0.5%. High inflation remained (14%)the whole year. Real incomes of the population have decreased. Recorded a budget deficit for the past 15 years - at 1.141 billion manat. Strict monetary policy led to a reduction in lending to the economy by almost 25% or approximately 4 billion manats.

In the closing speech, the president set the government's tasks for 2018:

-Support of macroeconomic stability

-increase in income of the Oil Fund

-increase in foreign exchange reserves

-attracting foreign investment

-development of the non-oil sector

-open new jobs

-realization of social infrastructure projects

-creation of industrial parks

-development of agriculture, tourism

-Exploration of export potential.

At the end of the meeting, Aliyev announced 2018 the year of the Azerbaijan People's Republic, which celebrates its centenary. It should be noted that the presidential assessment of the results of the two-year existence of the first democratic republic in the Muslim East has also changed - from accusations of transferring part of the Azerbaijani lands of Armenia to the understanding that this happened in a complex historical process.

The year of the Azerbaijan People's Republic will come to replace the year of Islamic solidarity, under the sign of which was 2017 year. Here, attention is also drawn to the evolution of the view on the last sign year. Touching upon this theme, Aliyev no longer represented solidarity as a system of protection from the West's tendencies, as it was before, but saw it as a multicultural project for the coexistence of world religions and civilizations.