Lowering Azerbaijan’s transparency rating will complicate financial borrowings

The main reason for lowering the status of Azerbaijan in the "Open Government"  international initiativeis  that the government did not remove restrictions on civil society.  Azerbaijan's status was reduced from full member to "inactive country", and  Baku was deprived of voting rights for a year. Another reason was the delay in the adoption of the National Plan of Action in the field of transparency after the completion of the previous program for 2012-2015. Azerbaijan has been given time to adopt a new plan before July 1, 2015 and then extended the deadline until the end of the year, but the plan was not adopted again. In addition, the government  is indiffernt to  its participation in this initiative, ignoring the discussion and activities at the regional level.  Will Baku  be able to solve  during a year these problems to restore the full status of the country in the initiative? Answering this question from Turan agency, Ibadoglu said that the main problem of the authorities  is  the absence of  political will.

The authorities should remove obstacles to the activities of civil society, to eliminate the selective approach to the NGOs, and to create a public platform with the participation of independent NGOs, he said. What will happen if the government does not fulfill the obligations in the field of transparency? Answering this question the expert said that the drop in oil prices caused the economic crisis. It dictates  the  need to attract foreign investments and borrowing from abroad. However, the low transparency of the rating will not allow to do so, and to attract foreign capital into the country. The solution of this problem is possible through the fight against corruption and open government. If the level of corruption  doesnot reduce, and investment and credit ratings do not rise, the overall economic problems will only worsen.

At the same time in the coming years  Azerbaijan will have to finance its  commitments in large energy projects. The talk is about  billions of dollars, which  cannot be borrowed from commercial banks, they can be obtained only in large international financial institutions - the World Bank, IMF, EBRD. The decrease of Azerbaijan’s status in international initiatives will hamper  Azerbaijan's negotiations with international financial institutions, he said. 

He also noted that the access to financial information in the  country is difficult,  there is no transparency of financial supervisors. Reports of government should be open and accessible, but the issue of declaration of income officials, which should be publicly available cannot be solved for 10 years.

Ibadoglu noted with regret that many of the proposals of civil society in the new National Plan of Action for Transparency in the 2016-18 biennium have not been taken into account. This applies to offers of financial and fiscal accountability, independence of the judiciary, and others. It should be noted that a year ago was  Azerbaijan membership in other international organization - "Transparency Initiative in the mining industry"was also lowered. -06D-