Press review 24.02.18

Strengthening social security in countries, problems in import-export, the state of the middle class, are the leading topics of the country's media.

The newspaper "Azerbaijan" in the article "Strengthening the social protection of the population remains the main goal" focuses on the recent orders of President Ilham Aliyev on increasing scholarships, pensions and benefits to certain categories of the population, as well as premiums to honorary titles.

In 2004-2017 salaries in the country increased by five times, pensions by 8 times, the level of poverty dropped to 5.4 percent.

The newspaper "Yeni Musavat" touches upon the problems in the import-export structure.

Despite declarations on the diversification of the economy, imports continue to increase, and exports are declining.

Thus, in January 2018, compared to the same period last year, imports increased by 53 percent, and the expert decreased by 6.3 percent. The expert Natig Jafarli noted that 90% of the export structure still belongs to the energy sector. Also, the growth of imports of fruits and vegetables is not clear, while the country itself produces these types of products. This means that domestic production is still weak.

One of the reasons for the problems is the administrative regulation of this industry. In addition, farmers do not have access to cheap and long-term loans. In the article

In the article "Who in Azerbaijan is poor, rich and" average?" the newspaper affects the issue of ranking the population by income level, and in particular, examines who can be considered the middle class.

On the one hand, we have the poor - more than five percent of the population. True, it has never been announced which specifically income in manat is the basis for classifying a family or a person as a poor. As for the rich, apparently, we do not have the rich. In any case, statistics about this is stubbornly silent. There is market economy, there are successful entrepreneurs and bankers, but there are not rich! It is somehow it's offensive for the country.

A year ago, the chairman of the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Financial Market Supervision of Azerbaijan, R.Aslanli, said that 29 percent of the population in the country are middle class. According to him, such an indicator was achieved due to the implementation of the economic strategy. However, again the criteria on the basis of which the calculations were made were not given.

Independent experts call more specific -1000 manat of income for each family member consisting of four people, that is 4,000 manats a month and 48,000 manats a year. And the family should have its own apartment, real estate, vehicle (car), education. "We can agree with such calculations. According to independent experts, proceeding from these criteria, somewhere around 12 percent of the population of Azerbaijan can be referred to the middle class. However, after the rise in prices over the past two years, it is extremely difficult to say whether this amount is sufficient to meet all those needs that turn a person into a solid "middle peasant", the author writes.

The article is questioning the official statistics.

"Of course, official structures can claim that the middle class is 29%, and the poor only 5%. But then it turns out that at least half of the inhabitants of Azerbaijan are rich people. And, thus, we have far left behind even the most developed and considered rich countries, where just 50% of the population is not rich, namely the middle class," the author sarcastically notes. -0--