What Does the 2025 Budget Promise?

The International Monetary Fund’s latest economic outlook for 2026–2028 reads less like a technical forecast and more like a map of a changing world. As major economies struggle with slowing growth, debt pressures and geopolitical fragmentation, some of the fastest-growing countries are no longer found in traditional centres of global power.

In any country, migration is not simply the movement of people. It is the movement of skills, expectations, and ultimately the future. For Azerbaijan, this process remains less dramatic than in a number of neighboring states, yet sufficiently persistent to shape the tone of economic debate.

Azerbaijan’s push to digitise its transport and logistics system is no longer just a policy ambition. It is increasingly visible in the numbers — uneven, but directional — that point to a system in transition from infrastructure to coordination.

Azerbaijan’s economy entered 2026 in a familiar configuration: externally resilient and fiscally supported by hydrocarbons, yet domestically constrained by weak consumer demand and limited diversification. First-quarter data point to macroeconomic stability, but the trajectory in the second quarter will depend less on oil — which continues to provide support — and more on whether domestic demand begins to recover.