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Head of State: "Thanks to the measures Azerbaijan took in a timely manner, our losses are minimal"

05 June 2020 01:13 (UTC +04:00)

"Of course, all our efforts during the pandemic have focused on saving people, protecting their lives and health. Thanks to the measures Azerbaijan took in a timely manner, our losses are minimal. According to the World Health Organization, Azerbaijan is considered a model country in the fight against the pandemic. We have also allocated major funds," said President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev in a videoconference held on the initiative of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) with the bank’s President Masatsugu Asakawa, Vice-President Shixin Chen and other executives of the ADB on June 1, APA reports.

Head of State said that to support the sectors of the economy affected by the pandemic, as well as the unemployed, those who have lost their jobs, the low-income people and even those informally employed, we have allocated more than 2 billion euros: "We are fighting informal employment and have taken serious measures. This year alone, more than 100,000 employment agreements were signed between employees and companies. At the same time, we understand that these people suffer from this problem. For this reason, our economic growth over four months was very low. But it was still at 0.2 percent. I know that, unfortunately, many countries are in recession now. We don’t know the results of the first five months yet – we will probably find that out in about a week’s time. However, I believe that we will cope with this situation. You rightly noted that a sharp drop in the oil price is a challenge for us, of course. However, we have managed to align our actions and budget with the new realities, and we must take into account the realities, whatever they may be. We have not reduced a single social project and all of them remain in our budget. However, projects that can wait for several years may be delayed to some extent. In general, I think that Azerbaijan will be among the countries showing good results.

I know that many countries – I believe there are more than 150 of them – have already applied to international financial institutions for financial support. Azerbaijan is not among them. You know that we are fulfilling the work entrusted to us and our expenses have always been lower than profits. I would say that our most important economic goal is to maintain and increase reserves."