President of Azerbaijan on the Way to Hungary

President Ilham Aliyev left Baku for abroad, reportedly starting an official visit to Hungary. However, so far no official confirmation of this has come.

Indirect proof is the lack of traffic police in the streets of Baku, despite the traffic jams in the city center.

According to Turan, the latest information on official receptions by the President is dated November 5, which says about the meeting with the UK Minister for Europe David Lidington.

Earlier, 3 November, President Aliyev received a delegation led by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary Peter Siyarto, which discussed issues of further expansion of bilateral relations in the field of tourism, youth, information and communication technology, pharmaceuticals, air transport, as well as in the framework of the Eastern EU partnership.

Peter Siyarto said that during the visit of President Ilham Aliyev to Budapest the sides will sign an agreement on strategic partnership between Azerbaijan and Hungary. It is also planned signing of five agreements, the key of which will be an agreement on civil aviation, a legal basis for direct air service from March 2015.

Hungarian official websites and the media also have not reported on the visit of Aliyev. This may mean that Aliyev went to another place before Budapest, said Turan.

Regarding the meetings in Budapest, it is possible that one of the central issues will be the construction of the gas pipeline Nabucco West (Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czech Republic and Germany). This project was shelved in June 2013, after the selection of the route Trans Adriatic Pipeline TAP (Turkey-Greece-Italy). Then the experts called it a temporary solution.

  The partner and analyst at consultancy RusEnergy Michael Krutikhin noted that the implementation of Nabucco in some form is possible, if they build a pipe bridge across Turkey to Bulgaria. Thence through the existing jumpers gas can flow into neighboring countries - Romania and then to Austria via Hungary. If they succeed, Nabucco will be able to function as planned. Both the pipelines will transport gas from Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.

In the construction of the gas pipeline Nabucco West Russia was not interested, but now the question is not as prevalent, because the day before the Hungarian parliament approved the competing project South Stream, which covers the supply of Russian gas to Europe.

Returning to bilateral Azerbaijani-Hungarian relations, Turan notes that turnover in 2013 amounted to $ 33.1 million, an increase compared with 2012 by 40%. In this case, as in 2012 and 2013, 99% of the transactions accounted for Hungarian exports.

In the first half of this year, from Hungary, Azerbaijan imported goods worth $ 13.2 million and exports in the opposite direction were insignificant - $ 354.5 thousand (basically kerosene jet fuel and iodine).

From Hungary to Azerbaijan were supplied pedigree cows, canned vegetables, pharmaceuticals, detergents, electrical and electronic products, personal hygiene products, etc. -0-