Azerbaijan, Baku, November 22 / Trend, A/ Akhundov /
Azerbaijan's foreign debt is manageable and far from the critical margin, Heydar Asadov, Chairman of the Accounting Chamber of Azerbaijan reported on Tuesday. He was speaking at the Parliament's plenary meeting devoted to examination of draft state budget for 2012 and three following years.
"Currently, the country's internal and external borrowings are limited. We plan to contribute to these efforts. It now becomes essential to submit indicators and bases confirming these margins for consideration to the Parliament," Asadov said.
He noted that the Accounting Chamber thinks it is essential to adopt a borrowings strategy.
As reported by the Finance Ministry, the state debt of Azerbaijan reached to $4,512.6 million on July 1, 2011, an equivalent to 8.1 percent of GDP.
As of January 1, 2011, the external state debt of Azerbaijan was $3,857.3 million (7.42 percent of GDP) and has increased by 17 percent since then.
As of January 1, 2010, the figure was $3,421.8 million or 7.95 percent of GDP. The country's external state debt increased by 12.7 percent last year.
Though Azerbaijan's current state debt is very far from being critical, the Government plans to develop a middle-term and long-term external debt management strategy to use it as a basis for conduct of efficient external borrowings policy.
World Bank's Global Development Finance 2011 rated Azerbaijan's state external debt as satisfactory.