Azerbaijan Wants to Take Foreign Loan of Four Billion Dollars

On January 28 representatives of the IMF are coming to Baku for a week’s visit.

In the same period, the missions of other international financial and credit institutions - the Asian Development Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development – will visit Azerbaijan.

According to the Financial Times, Baku is also negotiating with the World Bank for a loan of 4 billion dollars.

In addition, recently Baku signed an agreement with the Asian Development Bank for a loan of 1.1 billion dollars.

 "If the negotiations are successful, only for the current year Azerbaijan will get more debt than in the past 20 years," the newspaper said.

Given the decline in GDP in dollar terms, the size of the external debt will rise twofold for the year.

Note that a few years ago the Azerbaijani authorities considered the conditions of the IMF's lending predatory and actually expelled the organization from Azerbaijan in 2009.

For all the time of the IMF work with Azerbaijan (1992-2009), the country received loans totaling $ 363 million dollars, of which 248 million USD was in soft loans. The loans were issued in tranches for economic reforms. The last IMF loan dates back to 2005. After this period, despite the IMF's proposals, Baku, citing strengthening of its financial position, considered the IMF services unprofitable. -03D-