Press Review 05/18/2017

The importance of Islamic Solidarity Games in the Islamic world, the dependence of AZN on oil, the situation around the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), and accidents at work are the leading topics of today's press.

The Azerbaijan writes about the significance of the Islamic Solidarity Games for the Islamic world and about Azerbaijan's contribution to this process. This strengthens Azerbaijan's position in the world arena, the author asserts.

The Echo published an article entitled Azerbaijan Late with Devaluation of National Currency? The rate of the Azerbaijani manat again depends on petrodollars today.

Today, there are two active players, the Central Bank and the State Oil Fund, active in the foreign exchange market. And the CBA has been engaged in games for almost a year, while the only donor is the Oil Fund. This alignment shows the dependence of the economy on oil.

To keep the manat rate stable, it is important to carry out institutional reforms and reduce the financial burden on the state budget. Azerbaijan should have reduced the manat rate long ago, and the strategy for strengthening AZN was completely wrong.

The Novoye Vremya published an article titled Echo of Default Comes Out in Kazakhstan. The corruption and plundering of the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) and the inability to effectively manage this bank has led to the fact that pensioners of Kazakhstan may suffer. After all, the IBA owes 220 million USD to Kazakhstan JSC Unified Accumulative Pension Fund, which bought bonds of the IBA.

The Bizim Yol writes 13 people have been killed in accidents at work this year. From January to April this year, a total of 43 accidents occurred in the workplace, and 13 of them were lethal.