«For a few days every day in the market at least $ 500 million was purchased, and if things went well, by the end of the year foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank could fall sharply," President Ilham Aliyev said in Mingechevir during his meeting with doctors on 24 February.
The same day, the Chairman of Azerbaijani Parliament at the plenary session of the Parliament said that a week before the 33% devaluation of the manat investors traded currency savings of 2 billion manat, and before that - 2.5 billion manat.
Analysis of the pre-devaluation period shows that the country's officials provide the public with false information and they also benefit from the "death" of the manat. The fact is that the head of state and chairman of the Central Bank almost until the last moment assured the public that the manat "is most stable currency and no devaluation is possible." Only two days before the announcement of the devaluation the CBA gave verbal permission to banks not to interfere with investors to exchange their manat deposits for dollars.
So who traded these billions of manat? The banks themselves did. The fact is that the majority of Azerbaijani banks belong to the official oligarchy. President Ilham Aliyev's family owns at least 7 banks. The same CBA Chairman Elman Rustamov informally owns one bank. With insider information that a sharp devaluation will be decided, they accelerated this process, exchanging their AZN assets for USD. Note that on Tuesday, Ilham Aliyev said that "some speculators and unscrupulous people have taken advantage of this situation to get an unreasonable profit." We are talking about unjust enrichment at the level of 34% in one day.
The assertion that "every day in the market at least $ 500 million was purchased" does not hold water. The fact is that in this case the government should accept the fact that the national economy was too dollarized. In addition, not in favor of the officials is the fact that before the Black Saturday there were not any queues at the banks. --08B-
Economics
-
On 21 December, Russian Transport Minister Roman Starovoit met with Azerbaijani Minister of Digital Development and Transport Rashad Nabiyev at the Russian Ministry of Transport.
-
Hundreds of trucks are stuck in the Kazakh port of Kuryk, facing delays for several days while waiting for ferry transport to Azerbaijan, the Azakhstan portal reports lada.kz. The backlog is due to a combination of reduced ferry availability, adverse weather conditions, and an influx of cargo rerouted because of expanded sanctions on Russia.
-
Members of the Association of Independent Industrialists and Businessmen (MÜSIAD) have invested 61.3 million manats in Azerbaijan's economy over the past three years, Rashad Jabirli, chairman of "MÜSIAD Azerbaijan," revealed during a media briefing.
-
While the global economy faces persistent challenges, trade between China and Azerbaijan has defied downward trends, demonstrating significant growth. According to official statistics from Azerbaijan, bilateral trade in 2023 reached 3.1 billion US dollars. In just the first ten months of 2024, trade volume increased by 17.1% year-on-year, reaching 3.02 billion US dollars, putting the annual trade figure on track to hit a record high.
Leave a review