Last week the Milli Majlis [Azerbaijan Parliament] heard a report by the Azerbaijan Government for 2006. Like in previous years, the report was not of analytical character and highlighted the statistical data.
Presenting the report Azerbaijani Prime Minister Artur Rasizade announced that three years ago Azerbaijani economy entered qualitatively new stage, which characterized by two decisive peculiarities. The first is the successful continuation of the socio-economic development and the second is the deepening of economic and institution reforms.
Last year was remarkable with historical and economical events targeting provision of the energy security of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan main export oil pipeline, which assumes the world significance, the adoption of resolutions on the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway routes. As a result of deepening of socio-economic reforms, a relevant legal-normative basis was established in 2006 within the framework of pension reform system, targeted state social aid was applied, the issue of mortgage was commenced, and the process of denomination was has been set up. Furthermore, a problem of gasification of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic was concluded. The State Program on environmental protection and improvement of ecological situation in 2006-2010 has been developed and sanctioned.
However, the Cabinet of Ministers did not bring light to many aspects of the economic and social policy. Particularly, the discussions did not deal with extreme monopolization of national economy, which is one of reasons causing hike in prices. Moreover, an issue on prices, which for the fist time over the past few years undergone such essential changes, was left untouched. At the same time, increase of prices of energy resources, rise in prices of real state, long-term use of oil revenues were also out of attention.
However, these hearings differed from the previous ones for the circumstances they were held. Thus, at the end of discussions the Speaker called on MPs to take an active in the discussions, while this activity was accompanied by a quarrel.
The opposition urges that the report did not reflect the reality and cannot be adopted. Nevertheless, the report was adopted with 103 for, 5 - against and 5 - abstained.