BAKU, Azerbaijan, July 12. Azerbaijan's current account balance will account for 24.6 percent of GDP according to the forecasts of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for 2022, Trend reports citing the IMF.
This will mean the return of Azerbaijan's payment balance to the surplus. At the end of 2021, Azerbaijan's current account balance deficit totaled 15.2 percent of GDP.
The reduction in imported goods and services of the non-oil sector effects the balance of payments in the post-COVID period.
The IMF had recently predicted that Azerbaijan's balance of payments surplus would amount to 37.2 percent of GDP in 2022, while this figure in 2023 would decrease by 8.5 percent compared to the 2022 forecast and reach 28.7 percent of GDP.
The current account surplus of the country exceeded $8.291 billion in 2021. Meanwhile, the current account had a deficit of $227.6 million, or 0.5 percent of GDP in 2020, while the country's balance of payments posted a surplus of $4.365 billion in 2019.
Furthermore, the Standard & Poor's (S&P) credit rating agency previously projected that Azerbaijan's current account balance will form a surplus of 2.5 percent of GDP in 2022, and this figure will be 4.5 and 4.4 percent of GDP in 2023 and 2024. respectively.