Azerbaijani President approved reduction of budget costs in non-priority fields

Azerbaijan tries to reduce specific weight of the oil industry to one third of GDP, said Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in his interview to Russia 24 TV channel.

“Ideally Azerbaijan will try to make sure that the oil industry forms one third of GDP. This way the policy of diversification of economy could be considered successful. At present specific weight of the oil industry in GDP constitutes 45%,” Aliyev said.

He said reduction of oil prices at the world markets will “naturally have a negative impact on our plans. We have developed various scenarios and with the oil price of $60.00 per barrel the economy’s development will be stable,” he added.

Aliyev added that the state budget of Azerbaijan for fiscal year 2015 is based on the oil price of $90.00, while in the budget for fiscal year 2014 the oil price is $100 per barrel.

 “The only negative factor of oil price reduction is that what we have planned to achieve in a year, we will do in two years and we will reduce the budget costs in the non-priorirty fields and infrastructure projects. It is good that we have mainly implemented these projects in the previous years,” he added.

President added that there is an “absolute chaos” in the world concerning oil prices and nobody can explain the exact reasons of slump of oil prices.