About donkeys and the empty well

Social networks continue the ironic exaggeration of a sarcastic statement by the President Ilham Aliyev: "Those who are unable to divide oats of two donkeys, are trying to teach us." The head of state meant the independent experts, mainly economists, who for all previous years warned the president's team about the threat of ignominious defeat in the economic sphere.

Aliyev's statement against experts from the opposition was made on January 10 at a meeting of the crisis government; but this saying can be used for the Cabinet which under the golden stream of petrodollars managed to create deep crisis in one country, and is unable to find a way out of economic collapse.

Under such a situation, due to the fault of the current administration,   it would be better to use another saying, or as it is said in Azerbaijan "the word of elders”; it is meaning is “you will never fill in the well by pouring water in it.” The essence of this saying by the elders is that it is pointless to spend time and resources on something that does not pay dividends.

The last two crisis years in Azerbaijan showed that the economy of Azerbaijan in fact lined up in the form of a well, which did not bring water, and was only filled with water. In this case, the source of the imaginative well is the non-oil economy, which should generate the GDP, national heritage and human welfare. The crisis has shown that the well was empty, and all this time the visibility of water was created by the infusion from oil that formed a deceptive false idea of  the full well. According to official data, the total revenues in SOFAZ from the sale of profit oil and natural gas in 2001-2015 amounted to $121.3 billion. Of these, nearly $100 billion were thrown into a well, leaked into the ground, leaving only a mirage of empty office skyscrapers and residential buildings, destroyed roads and communications, even oil.

Statements about the rapid growth of non-oil sector to 68% of GDP became bare in the years of crisis, presenting a complete dependence on oil - GDP fell by half, dependence on imports on eight groups of essential goods has exceeded 70%, the dependence on external loans exceeded 30%, and in a couple of years, according to World Bank forecasts, will exceed 50%.

At a meeting of the government were not offered any recipes to create a water-bearing well, which could be the economy of Azerbaijan. The latest decision of the administration, which followed the meeting of the Crisis Cabinet about the transfer of the next portion of $7.5 billion petrodollars to the Central Bank, demonstrates the continuation of the policy of flooding the well, but it usually ends very sad.  There is another saying by the elders, which means that “some have a good beginning, but a bad end!”