BAKU, Azerbaijan, Apr. 23
by Zeyni Jafarov - Trend:
Azerbaijan, despite the pandemic situation in the world, maintains a quite stable credit position, Sophia Donets, Senior CIS economist at Renaissance Capital investment company, told Trend.
According to Donets, this was mainly due to the significant reserves accumulated in recent years, including accumulations in the sovereign fund and the gold and foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank.
Along with this, the senior economist said that Azerbaijan maintains its credit ratings at BB+, and the forecasts of such international rating agencies as S&P and Fitch have been revised from "negative" to "stable".
Regarding the public debt, she noted that despite its expansion by 2.5 percent last year, Azerbaijan remains one of the CIS countries with the lowest indicator in this direction (20 percent of GDP).
"The size of the state and external debt of Azerbaijan remains one of the smallest in the region, second only to Russia," Donets stressed.
The senior economist at the investment company noted that the regional CIS markets have every chance to benefit from the expected global economic recovery in 2021 and the increased interest for the assets of emerging and border markets, as well as from large-scale COVID-19 vaccinations.
“It can be said that 2021 as a whole should be a year of recovery for the countries of our region. However, the continuing uncertainty about the virus and high sensitivity to the global oil situation may be sources of increased volatility,” Donets added.
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