Minister: State support to SMEs should not be limited to preferential loans

State support for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in Azerbaijan should not be limited to concessional loans, Economy Minister Mikayil Jabbarov said on February 10 at the conference “Heydar Aliyev and the tax system of Azerbaijan: towards new challenges”, Report informs.

“This process should be more extensive. With the establishment of the Business Development Fund, we will introduce new products in this area,” the minister said.

Jabbarov noted that the development of the liberated territories is of utmost importance among the main goals this year: “Ensuring development in the liberated areas will require the majority of capital investments. On the other hand, the acceleration of industrialization, the development of the agricultural sector, the maximum realization of the service and tourism potential and the digitalization of the economy, the provision of state regulation resulting from the energy transition and the preservation of the competitiveness of our individual sectors are also among our goals.”

According to him, all this will accelerate the development of entrepreneurship in the country: “Most of the 300,000 employment contracts added in the non-oil private sector in 4 years belong to small and medium-sized businesses.”