"With respects to the earnings, I just want to clarify because there is a common opinion that these high oil prices bring enormous additional wealth to the exporters. Yes, it is true. Our revenues increase. But at the same time, we lost money on the capital markets because our assets of our State Oil Fund are in different instruments,"President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said in an interview with the correspondent of the Italian “Il Sole 24 Ore” newspaper Roberto Bongiorni in Cernobbio, APA reports.
"The capital market went down. Therefore, we as many other sovereign funds, lost, not a lot of money. Some sovereign funds lost more than 100 billion dollars. We lost 2-3 billion dollars".
"But with respect to the diversification, of course, no matter how we try to diversify our exports, our non-oil and non-gas exports will not match oil and gas exports, because oil and gas exports are growing. For instance, with Italy, we supplied natural gas to Italy last year in the amount of 9,6 billion dollars. This year, in 7 months, 11 billion dollars and the gas price is up. So, for us diversification is not statistics which is reflected in GDP. It is a means to provide jobs and to provide good quality of life to our people. If you look at our GDP, for instance, in these six months, what you will see. GDP grew 6,2%, but in the non-energy sector almost 10%, in the non-energy related industry more than 11% and also in the non-energy exports grew 25%. The growth is here, but it is not enough. Therefore, we need more reforms, more investments in the non-energy sector and for that, of course, we need to have a better business climate. Also there is an improvement, but still we need to do a lot in order to remove all these bureaucratic obstacles and some psychological legacy of the Soviet past," said President.
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