Azerbaijan leaves over 50 countries behind on index of involvement in international trade

Singapore and Hong Kong became leaders. Azerbaijan left Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan behind among CIS countries.

Index of involvement in the international trade, calculated by WEF, is based on several factors. These factors include access to domestic and foreign markets, administrative infrastructure at the border, efficiency of customs work and others.

Azerbaijan has a favorable business climate. So the country with an index of 4.68 held the 46th place. The situation is well with access to the domestic market (the 52th place, the index - 4.07).

According to the World Bank and IFC, Azerbaijan was announced top reformer in 2009 due to great changes to improve business climate and facilitate the business terms.

According to the WEF, development of trade in the country is hampered on a category 'customs efficiency'. Therefore, the country has held the 103th palce (index -2.91), though the maximum rate of import customs duties in the country is 15 percent.

However, high uncertainty of crisis development does not give confidence that countries leading in rating will not change its principles of openness.

Many countires have used protectionism. If this process gets out of control, the whole world trade will collapse. It will inevitably lead to the second Great Depression. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan does not see any need to support national production in using protectionist policy.

"At present, there are enough legal acts to ensure development of domestic production, and in general, economic development in Azerbaijan," the State Customs Committee said.

Azerbaijan is not wiling to take this action because such a policy, on the one hand, promotes development of national production and protection of domestic producer, but on the other hand, can lead to stagnation in the economy, strengthening monopolies and reducing national goods' competitiveness.

WEF hopes that barriers to access the market will be reduced in the process of joining the WTO. Azerbaijan continues to hold active negotiations to get admitted to the WTO. Azerbaijan has already held VII round of meetings with the organization's member states..

According to the World Bank, 17 countries of the G20 have introduced new protectionist measures by spring 2009. The U.S. with its anti-crisis campaign "Buy American" was among the first.

/Trend Capital/