BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 9
Bu Fidan Babayeva – Trend:
Azerbaijan increased export of its products to member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) from January through July 2020, Trend reports referring to the statistical bulletin of the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee.
According to the committee, the value of export of Azerbaijani products to CIS countries made up $809 million in the past 7 months of 2020 against $749 million for the same period of last year. Thus, the countries raised import of products from Azerbaijan by 8 percent year on year. The countries’ share in the total export of Azerbaijan grew from 6.11 to 8.87 percent.
Meanwhile, import of products from CIS countries by Azerbaijan declined from $1.82 billion to $1.53 billion year on year. The share of CIS countries in the total imports of Azerbaijan made up 25.93 percent against 21.63 percent in the same period of 2019.
From January through July 2020, the volume of foreign trade operations of Azerbaijan and CIS countries slightly crossed $2.3 billion, showing a 10-percent decrease over the year. The export-import ratio in the foreign trade relations between Azerbaijan and the countries was marked by a slight shift towards export – 35 and 65 percent, respectively, against 30 and 70 percent, accordingly for the first seven months of last year.
Thus, the foreign trade balance of the two countries for the reporting period remained negative for Azerbaijan and made up $720 million.
Speaking about the export of Azerbaijani goods to CIS countries, mainly three countries are implied: Russia - 53.2 percent of all exports to CIS, Ukraine - 33.7 percent and Belarus - 8.2 percent. The growth in exports to the commonwealth countries was due to purchase of Azerbaijani oil by Belarus for refining.
As for non-oil exports, Russia still remains the main market for these products, to which they are supplied.
From January through July 2020, Azerbaijan's foreign trade turnover surpassed $15 billion, which is 1.4 times less compared to the same period of 2019. The balance of foreign trade turnover decreased 1.1 times on an annualized basis, and remained positive, amounting to $3.2 billion.
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