Today.Az » Business » Azerbaijan is in top 3 countries in budget deficit to GDP ratio
09 May 2012 [14:17] - Today.Az
Azerbaijan ranks third in the world in terms of the state budget deficit to GDP ratio, Chairman of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) Elman Rustamov said on Tuesday in a speech at the presentation of a special issue of The Business Year, dedicated to Azerbaijan.
"Today, in terms of the level of national income per capita, Azerbaijan is ahead of the 100 countries around the world. As a result of tripling of the economy over the past eight years, Azerbaijan has confidently entered the list of middle-income countries and strengthened its positions. For comparison, in the last 50 years GDP per capita in the world grew by only 2.4 times," Rustamov said.
According to him, as a result of deliberate oil policy, conversion of the oil wealth to material well-being, sustainable development, and human capital was provided.
"Socio-economic infrastructure in Azerbaijan is now being built from scratch. Public investment in the last eight years has grown by 40 times, the total investment in this period exceeded $32 billion. Some 51 percent of the budget accounts for public investment. In the face of declining spending on social programs in the world including education and pensions, the budget of Azerbaijan is both socially and investment-directed," Rustamov said.
He noted that Azerbaijan has strategic foreign exchange reserves in the amount of 70 per cent of GDP.
"The strategic reserves exceed the national debt by 10 times, the amount of foreign exchange reserves per capita is $5,000. According to the World Economic Forum, Azerbaijan in terms of the ratio of total financial savings to GDP ranks sixth in the world," Rustamov said.
He said that if in the balance of payments of the country eight years ago there was a deficit of 30 per cent, today it was replaced by 30-percent surplus.
"The ratio of public debt to GDP is only seven per cent, for comparison - in the G7 countries this figure reached 120 percent," Rustamov said.
/Trend/
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