President of Azerbaijan: Oil price slump pushed us to improve

Baku. 18 October. REPORT.AZ/ “Azerbaijan sees no risk to its budget with changing oil prices because its 2017 financial plan envisions the price of $40 per barrel”.

Report informs, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said in his interview to Sputnik International News Agency.

President Ilham Aliyev told Dmitry Kiselev, Director General of Russia today International News Agency that this year is headed toward a surplus because of the $25 per barrel price outlook in the budget that had to be revised. "Next year we are including $40/barrel. We think it should not fall lower, so in principle this does not create any additional difficulties for us," Aliyev said, noting only the need to cut public investment projects. "That would benefit everyone: companies that would get the opportunity to invest, and producing countries that could obtain the funds for various projects," Aliyev said.

President noted, today’s main challenges are to diversify export, enter market with competitive products, compensate currency loss caused by fall of oil prices.

“Everything happens for a reason. There was high demand for investments by public organizations. In this sense oil prices slump pushed us to improve towards more economic approach”, Azerbaijani President said.