Press Review 06/15/2016

The focus of today's press is the anniversary of Heydar Aliyev’s return to power in 1993, the external debt of the country, the government incompetence, and the problems of crop production.

The newspaper Azerbaijan in a lengthy material under the headline: Annals of National Salvation of Modern Azerbaijan presents Heydar Aliyev as the savior of the independent Azerbaijani statehood.

Azadlig writes about the government's inability to cope with the economic problems and the failure of attempts to overcome the crisis. It reports the drop in investment in January-February 2016 in the non-oil sector by 73% and writes about the decline in agriculture. The author believes that the government is unable to cope with the crisis and therefore should resign.

Novoye Vremya under the headline The Country Borrows Heavily writes about the growth of external debt of Azerbaijan. As of April 1, the country's external debt amounted to 7 448.7 million USD, or 21% of GDP.

"As you can see, the country gets into debt. All this is happening against the backdrop of falling oil prices. Whereas earlier Azerbaijan closed the debt hole using petrodollars, now after the decline in oil prices, there is nothing to fill the gap with," the author writes.

Bizim Yol gives the statement by the head of the parliamentary committee on agrarian issues, Eldar Ibrahimov, that 30 quintals of grain is picked per hectare. However, the independent expert Valeh Maharramov believes this statement is not serious.

According to him, at this performance, Azerbaijan would completely provide itself with grain. Today, however, the country imports 1.5 million tons of wheat. Maharramov points out that neither the State Statistics Committee, nor the Ministry of Agriculture provided specific figures about the performance of grain harvest.

Over the last 15 years, imports of cereals increased threefold.    -0--