Finance

Home page

Finance

Azerbaijan hosts conference to discuss global financial crisis impact on oil economies

20 April 2009 16:34 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Nijat Mustafayev - APA-Economics. The Center for Economic Research has hosted a conference on the topic of â€œThe Impact of the Global Financial Crisis on Oil Economiesâ€.

The event was attended by MPs and economists as well as representatives of state agencies and international organizations.

Jon Ramberg, Norwayâ€™s Ambassador to Azerbaijan, said that during the crisis the price of oil dropped by about three times, which seriously affected the economies dependent on oil.

Andrei Illarionov, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, added that the current financial crisis can not be described as global, because its influence didnâ€™t extend to all countries.

â€œThe crisis has affected the United States, Northern States, some European countries and Commonwealth of Independent Statesâ€ he added.

According to him, countries such as China got a 1 percentage point rise a year in steel production over the past 27 years but they got steel production increased by 12% to 48% amid the crisis.

With regard to the impact of the crisis in Russia, according to Andrei Illarionov, the decline of industrial production began in Russia 9 months before the crisis emerged in the United States.

Gregory Jedrzejczak, World Bank Country Manager for Azerbaijan disagreed with Andrei Illarionov on the extent of the crisis.

â€œDespite the 6% economic growth in China, this country should bring the figure at least to 8% to address the problem of unemployment. Azerbaijan must take the same measures too,â€ he added.

He added that the World Bank stepped up efforts during a crisis, and plans to increase the budget to $35 billion. The Bank also intends to focus on poor countries.

According to him, Azerbaijan managed to confront the first wave of crisis through the correct monetary policy of the National Bank.

â€œIn addition to oil and gas production, Azerbaijan should also put other goods on both domestic and foreign markets becuase main resources may dry up in 15-20 years,â€ he added.