Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 6
By Jamshid Mustafayev – Trend:
The new production spheres are being created to replace import with domestic products, Azerbaijani Economy Minister Shahin Mustafayev said, Trend reported on Aug. 6 referring to official media outlets.
“Azerbaijan is able to fully provide itself with many types of products, while the level of self-sufficiency in other products is growing every year,” he noted.
“At the same time, import substitution is expanding, while the share of some goods in import is declining,” he added. “For example, cement production increased by 17.6 percent, aluminium rods and profiles - by 52.8 percent, while their import decreased by 89 percent and 81 percent respectively over the past three years.”
“If we consider the import structure of 2018, we can see that more than 70 percent of the imported products were used for the development of the economy, the implementation of big infrastructure projects, the attraction of modern technologies to the priority spheres as part of the investment promotion mechanism, the development of transport and logistics, infrastructure modernization, meeting the needs of new enterprises in raw materials and semi-finished products, as well as the accumulation of state reserves," Mustafayev said.
In general, Azerbaijan’s growing potential opens up great opportunities for expanding production and export, diversifying the structure of foreign trade, and developing a competitive sector of export of non-oil products.
The development policy in the foreign trade segment as in other sectors of the economy is also aimed at more complete realization of these opportunities.