Cabinet Meeting Causes Lot of New Questions - Gubad Ibadoglu

The meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers of Azerbaijan conducted under the chairmanship of President Ilham Aliyev did not respond to the numerous questions and raised many new questions, the economist Gubad Ibadoglu said.

On his profile in Facebook the expert wrote that speeches at the meeting should have been devoted to the macroeconomic situation in the country.

"Instead, we were given only positive trends in industry and agriculture. The meeting did not mention GDP, even for the nine months, which characterizes the result, and did not report about its decline. They did not say for what reason 75 billion dollars of GDP in 2014 fell this year to 35 billion USD. They also did not say about the consequences of reducing the rate of non-oil GDP, "said Ibadoglu.

The economist drew attention to the fact that neither the Prime Minister nor the Ministers of Economy and Finance spoke at the meeting, as well as there were no positive comments about the decrees and orders signed recently.

"They are apparently aware that haphazard steps have no effect. Even the head of the Central Bank did not speak of the manat to calm investors and consumers. It seems that AZN should be as it is and such an abnormal economic process does not trouble anyone," the economist wrote.

He stressed that at the meeting they spoke only about the restoration of traditional forms of agriculture and livestock development and attracting tourists to the country.

"In short the main objective is to attract currency to the country and not allow the possibility to withdraw currency abroad. No one said that this is not an option and it is impossible in a short time to achieve these goals. They did not say that the future of the country depends on the transition to an innovative economy and the organization of production of innovative products. By restoration of traditional farms we cannot go forward, and we will just fall back to the years 1960-1980," he said.   ----71B