Baku, Azerbaijan, June 11
By Emin Aliyev - Trend:
The World Bank (WB) reconsidered its forecast for Azerbaijan's GDP growth in 2014 downward, according to the WB report "Global Economic Prospects".
The bank believes that during the year the country's GDP will increase by 5.2 percent. The bank expected 5.3 percent growth of the national economy in the forecast announced in January.
The bank reconsidered expectations for the coming years. Thus, the World Bank thinks that the economy will grow by 4.1 percent in 2015, while by 3.6 percent in 2016. In its previous forecast, the World Bank predicted 4.5 percent and 3.9 percent growth respectively.
The IMF also predicts a slowdown of the national economy rates from 5 percent as of 2014 to 4.6 percent in late 2015.
Azerbaijan's GDP amounted to 18.2 billion manats at a nominal growth of 3.96 percent per year in January-April 2014, according to the State Statistics Committee.
The country's real GDP growth is expected to reach 5.2 percent in 2014. GDP volume is projected at 59.4 billion manats (5.8 percent growth) in 2015, according to the socio-economic development concept of Azerbaijan, prepared by the Ministry of Economy and Industry.
The WB also lowered forecasts for the ratio of the current account surplus to GDP from 15.9 percent to 12.6 percent this year, from 12.5 percent to 8.1 percent in 2015 and from 12.5 to 5.6 percent in 2016.
IMF predicts this figure at 15 percent of GDP in 2014. It expects to decrease Azerbaijan's current account surplus to 9.9 percent in 2015. The figure was 19.7 percent of GDP in 2013.
The official exchange rate is 0.7842 AZN/USD on June 22.
edited by CN