BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 17
By Eldar Janashvili – Trend:
The situation is satisfactory on the Azerbaijani food market, Vusal Gasimli, executive director of the Azerbaijani Center for Analysis of Economic Reforms and Communication, said.
“The annual food balance on some types of products is prepared in Azerbaijan, namely, wheat, other cereals, cereal beans, flour, bakery and other flour products, rice, potatoes, onions, vegetables, melons and gourds, fruits and berries, meat and meat products, milk and dairy products, vegetable oil, butter, tea, etc...” Gasimli added, Trend reports on March 17 referring to the Center.
"An analysis of the food balance shows that the self-sufficiency level for cereals reaches 70 percent and our reserves in this sphere recently have amounted to 1-1.2 million tons,” the executive director said. “As a rule, the balance from the beginning of the year reaches more than 40 percent of the ingredients which are used for food production."
“The level of self-sufficiency with potatoes in 2019 amounted to 87.8 percent while the balance of potatoes from the beginning of the year reaches more than 70 percent,” Gasimli said. “The level of self-sufficiency with vegetables is 112 percent, with melons - 100.8 percent, with fruit and berries - 123.1 percent, with meat and meat products - 82.5 percent, with eggs - 101.8 percent, with milk and dairy products - 86.2 percent, with salt - 111.4 percent and with bakery and flour products - 100 percent.”
"In other words, as Economy Minister Mikayil Jabbarov stressed Azerbaijan has enough food and there are no problems with the delivery in the country," the executive director said. “Moreover, Azerbaijan also has food reserves. In case of any force majeure situation, population will be covered."
“In accordance with the reports of authoritative international structures, the food security indicator has greatly grown in Azerbaijan recently,” Gasimli said. “In this regard, one may see the Global Food Security Index, developed by The Economist Group. In accordance with this analysis, over the past seven years, a consistent increase has been observed in the total food security index of Azerbaijan, which amounted to 12.7 percent.”
"In other countries, this indicator was 6-7 percent at best,” Gasimli said. “This means that Azerbaijan is far ahead of other countries in this indicator, being the world leader in terms of growth. Our country ranked 53rd in this report in 2019, rising by three more steps. Presently, Azerbaijan is one of the top ten countries in Asia and the Pacific in terms of ensuring food security.”
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