WB: Azerbaijan needs to raise productivity to expand export markets

To expand export markets, Azerbaijan needs to participate in more international organizations, as well as increase the productivity of enterprises and, accordingly, the competitiveness of products, World Bank Regional Director for the South Caucasus Sebastian Molineus told Report.

“When it comes to again increasing the export potential of Azerbaijan as I mentioned earlier two important aspects – one I think is the integration into community, WTO is one example, accessing markets generally will be a critical aspect of it,” he said. “Number two is increasing the productivity, if you want to access the global markets you need to make sure that your products are competitive and in order to do so you need to make sure that the skills are actually developed.”

“It is very important to ensure that you have a more productive non-oil and gas sector to ensure for long run growth. Now for this to happen I think that there are several aspects: number one we need to ensure that state owned enterprises don’t block and stifle some of the entrepreneurship and creativity.

Development of management skills will be important, access to new market will certainly be important reform area once again to ensure that you have a more productive non-oil and gas sector that is competitive and that again can help the govt or country I should say grow moving forward,” he added.

Speaking about the inflation in Azerbaijan, he said that it is central bank policy that is playing and will continue to play an important role.

“Please note in this respect that there are many outside factors right now leading to the high inflation rates that we see for example the war in Ukraine and the impact it had on the global prices,” he said.

In general, according to the WB representative, there are several actions that the country can take to ensure further economic growth.

“I want to focus on some steps that I think are important. First, it is investment in human capital. I mean healthcare, it is very important to improve the quality of education as well. Right now, if you look at indicators such as the World Bank Human Development Index, Azerbaijan is below the average among upper middle-income countries and other comparable countries in the Europe and Central Asia region. Therefore, I think that important reforms in the field of human capital development can be carried out here to help Azerbaijan develop further,” concluded Molineus.