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Azerbaijan President: Our economy will successfully function even with todayâ€™s oil prices

31 January 2009 11:00 (UTC +04:00)

"It is democratic, so if the people support this or that leader they have the right to elect him. So I think lifting the restrictions (on the number of terms) is more democratic than having these restrictions," he told Reuters in an interview late on Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

"You will not find any member of the European Union whose leader cannot be elected as many times as the people want him to be in this position. Is it democratic? Yes. So the same should be applied to Azerbaijan," he added.
Aliyev accused the West of applying double standards in its approach to Azerbaijan in many issues.

â€œIf the criticism is justified and when it comes from a respectable source we are more than ready and willing to discuss it," he said. "Some of the criticism we sometimes hear from various NGOs actually does not bother (us) because this criticism is mainly biased."

Aliyev said the West often judged human rights selectively and ignored major violations in countries where it had geopolitical interests. He mentioned Armenia as an example.

"The situation with human rights in Azerbaijan is not bad. If you look at our region you will see that countries in our neighborhood who brutally violate the elementary human rights of their people have not become the subject of criticism."

"Sometimes those countries that are considered to be more friendly or more close or more, how to say it, more associated with the West, if they do something wrong it is not noticed."

"But if Azerbaijan, which is also friendly to the West but which pursues its own independent policy, does one percent of what those other countries do then we immediately become a subject of criticism."
On resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, one of a handful of "frozen conflicts" stemming from the collapse of the Soviet Union, Aliyev said there were still no results.

As to economic growth, Ilham Aliyev added that his country has enjoyed the fastest economic growth in the world over the past several years.

"Of course the times when we had GDP of 25-30 percent are over -- it is not possible to repeat. And the fact that for the last five years, our GDP grew by many times, well I think that is a historical record," he underscored.

"Our forecast for this year is about 10 percent, which I think in the conditions of the global crisis is more than enough. And probably we will continue this level of development. I think we will manage to do 10 percent," he said.

Azerbaijan announced last year at an OPEC meeting in Algeria that it could cut production by 300,000 barrels per day to 540,000 bpd, which will be its lowest output level in two years, to help support world prices.

Aliyev said cuts would depend on the oil price but that the target would be a maximum of 300,000 bpd.
"If it remains as it is, probably that will be the target. If it goes up, probably we will amend the figure. We could cut the cuts," he said.
Cuts had already begun, the president said.

"We were planning to produce about 55 or 60 million tonnes a year (of oil) and now the programme is for 50 million tonnes for the year," he added.

He said Azerbaijan would continue cooperation with OPEC but was cautious when asked if Azerbaijan would join it.

"We were not invited," he said, adding that a fair price for oil would be around $80, $90 or $100 per barrel.

"To my mind this price is the best for everyone: this will be acceptable for consumers, this will be sufficient for companies to invest and for countries which receive profit from oil sales," he said.

"I can tell you that even with an oil price of $40 or $45 a barrel, which we have today, our economy will successfully function and our economy will be able to tolerate this level of prices. We have had even worse times as you remember."

Aliyev said growth during the crisis showed the success of economic reforms but warned that the economy needed to be further diversified and vowed to push ahead with major infrastructure projects.

"Mainly it is power stations, gasification, highways, water supply, sanitation, irrigation -- these are the major infrastructure we have implemented," he said. "Part of them are already completed and we achieved what we planned and part is to be completed in the coming years."

"In the future this will allow us not to think about the oil price. Oil should just be good insurance and money that we accumulated in the oil fund should be good protection from any kind of crisis."

Like Russia and Norway, Azerbaijan has set up a fund to keep oil revenues from distorting the economy and to use on long-term investment projects. It currently stands at $11.2 billion.