Press Review 01/11/2017

The speech by Ilham Aliyev at the final session of the Cabinet of Ministers, the detention of the blogger Mehman Huseynov, the position of credit unions and the economy as a whole are the leading topics of today's press.

The paper Azerbaijan writes about the speech by Ilham Aliyev at the Cabinet meeting on results of 2016, and that he announced 2017 the year of Islamic solidarity.

Aliyev said that despite the crisis, the country has opened more than 100 thousand jobs, while the non-oil sector development gives reason to look to the future with optimism.

The website Azadliq.info writes about the detention of the blogger Mehman Huseynov and cites in this respect the opinion of the head of the Popular Front Party Ali Kerimli. Kerimli considers it the work of those officials, the photos and videos of whose estates the blogger exhibited in social networks.

Echo publishes an article on the elimination of credit unions. Many such associations will lose their licenses for violations of the law.

Credit unions are a kind of cooperatives that can provide loans only to their members. This is the simplest form of non-bank credit organization.

As of September 30, 2016, 109 credit unions operated in Azerbaijan. In the past year, 11 of these financial institutions closed.

Novoye Vremya publishes an article on the state of the economy, which is in the need of serious reform. The economy of Azerbaijan is a single segment, based on oil and gas. It is not clear whether the peak of the crisis is reached, or it is all just the beginning. -0 ----