Azerbaijan, Baku, Dec.29 / Trend, V.Zhavoronkova /
Azerbaijan is a very important country for the U.S. in security, energy and internal reforms, U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan Matthew Bryza said at a press conference in Baku on Thursday.
"Azerbaijan is very important country for us in these three areas and should continue the cooperation," he said.
"With regard to economy we have seen that the government of Azerbaijan has taken many steps we encouraged them to take," Bryza underlined.
He said the GDP has increased by 3 times since 2004, poverty decreased from 49 to 9 percent since 2003.
"We have spent a lot of time telling our colleagues in the Azerbaijani government that it is important to diversify economic growth and not rely so much to the natural gas and oil. We see now that the economic growth is shifting away from oil and gas to other sectors. So, many positive things happen in the country especially in the area of economic reforms", he added.