The Russian rating agency ACRA is forecasting the growth of Azerbaijan’s economy in 2018 at 1.5% with further acceleration of GDP growth to 3.2% in 2022, the agency’s report for Azerbaijan says.
The agency noted that after the economic recession in 2016 and nominal growth of 0.1% in 2017, the economy of Azerbaijan began to demonstrate a steady recovery at the turn of 2017-2018. At the same time, the growth in real terms in non-oil sectors was 1.9% in May and is ahead of similar indicators in aggregate terms (1.1%).
“The economic growth has stabilized in January-May thanks to almost all segments of the real sector, which showed noticeable values of positive dynamics in real terms, except for construction, where a decline of 11.2% was recorded,” the report said.
The most significant increase (8.5%) was observed in agriculture, and the least significant increase (0.9%) – in freight transport. At the same time, due to the tangible influence of the oil part of both industry and GDP of the country, as well as due to the restrained dynamics in the oil industry, the overall economic growth in January-May shows more modest values: from 1.1% to 2.3% in different months of this year in the annual comparison, the report said.
The trend of formation of almost half of GDP at the expense of the commodity segment of the economy will continue throughout the forecast horizon (until 2022), the ACRA analysts said.
“The basic impetus of economic activity in Azerbaijan in 2017-2018 is occurring solely on the basis of the wave of delayed growth in the non-resource part of the economy and due to the growth of export revenues. Some recovery will be observed in the raw materials industry of the country since the second half of this year. The transport capacity of the Southern Gas Corridor system has already been put into operation, which will allow gas to be carried from Azerbaijan to Turkey and further to Europe via the TANAP gas pipeline. This will allow Azerbaijan to improve the balance of payments, intensify growth of the raw material part of the economy,” the report says. (Trend/Business World Magazine)
