Press Review 03/08/2016

The official newspaper Azerbaijan writes about the ongoing reforms in Azerbaijan and state support for economic activity. One of the most authoritative reports Doing Business 2016 assesses the business situation in Azerbaijan, which has improved by 17 points and occupies the 63^rd place among 189 countries of the world.

  The report Global Competition 2015-2016 gives Azerbaijan the 40^th place among 140 countries (7^th place among the CIS countries).

 The article also states that 78,000 jobs opened in Azerbaijan for the first half of this year.

Azadlig writes about the continuing rise in prices. The newspaper writes that the rise is backed by Ilham Aliyev, who has not commented on bread price increase, although he once inquired about the growth in prices for eggs. The author claims that the government has not been able to explain the increase in tariffs on light, water and bread. And all this is the result of improper management of the country. When the price of eggs jumped up, Aliyev held a whole meeting, but this time, there was no meeting, which suggests that the initiative to raise the price of bread came from President Ilham Aliyev, the author claims.

Yeni Musavat writes that the population cannot return bank loans and the number of bad loans is growing. According to the latest report of the National Bank, the volume of bad loans amounted to 132.9 million AZN in May.

As of June 1, the figure was 1 billion 514 million manats. The author notes that the first problems arose with loans in foreign currency, but now there are also problems with manat credits.

Compared with February of last year, overdue loans increased 33%. Banks should take effective steps not to let the problem grow. Solving the problem is in the following: the Central Bank should pay the difference in the rate of AZN and USD in loans issued in foreign currency.