Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 14
Trend:
The partnership agreement, which will be signed with the European Union (EU), will cover many spheres, including the economic cooperation, said Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev.
He made the remarks at a meeting with members of MEDEF (Movement of the Enterprises of France) International in Paris.
“Taking into account that last month we launched negotiations with European Commission on a partnership agreement, which is supposed to be a very comprehensive document, which will cover all the areas including economic cooperation, I think that one of the important elements of our cooperation could be increase of our bilateral trade. Today, it is, I think, less than one billion euros. But primarily if you look at the structure of our trade it’s mainly our oil export to France. Therefore, we need to diversify it, to buy more and sell more,” noted President Aliyev.
“And I think we have a very good tool of our economic cooperation, which is a joint economic commission, which met relatively recently and which addresses all the important areas of our cooperation,” said the president. “Reforms will allow us to have a long-term sustainable development, economic development and modernization of our country and our economy because, as I said, already several times in Azerbaijan, for us the post-oil period has already started. Not because we ran out of resources. No. We have huge oil and gas reserves, which will be available for the markets, for decades ahead. But because now we need to plan our future as if we don’t have natural resources, base our economy on competitiveness, on proper management.”
“In our reforms, of course, we also use experience of developed countries. We also have good consultancy, which helped us to prepare the strategic road maps for every sector of our economy,” added President Aliyev.