Azerbaijan - Building Competitiveness : An Integrated Non-Oil Trade and Investment Strategy, Volume 1. Summary Report

[摘要] Azerbaijan's early transition to anindependent, market-based economy has been tumultuous,entailing significant economic costs, and social impacts.Yet, unlike many transition economies, sound economicreforms since 1995, have enabled the country to achievemacroeconomic stability, and resume growth. Notwithstanding,the impact on poverty reduction has been modest,particularly in the case of the urban poor who did notbenefit from land reform. To this end, the Government iscommitted to a poverty reduction program, throughmacroeconomic and structural reforms, to alleviate povertyand improve living conditions. This report looks at the roleof trade and investment in reducing poverty, taking intoaccount the fact that the oil sector, expected to be theprimary driver of growth, accounts for 75 percent of thetotal increase in real output. Although projected growth inthe non-oil sectors is 6.3 percent, and while relativelyslow compared to the expected rapid growth in the oilsector, it would be a significant improvement over theaverage 3.8 percent growth rate achieved between 1995 and2001. This base case growth scenario would reduce theincidence of poverty from 50 percent, to 30 percent, andwould reduce the share of those in extreme poverty from 17percent, to 7 percent by 2010. The report stipulates theexchange rate does not appear to hamper competitiveness, butremains a future challenge. Given the fact that privatesector is liquidity constrained (the capital market isunderdeveloped), fiscal policy will provide main policies tomanage the oil windfall successfully, as well asaccumulating the excess oil revenues in the Oil fund abroad,providing a fiscal sterilization, thus avoiding excessivereal exchange rate appreciation. This study is a diagnosticof the non-oil trade and investment environment inAzerbaijan. Its primary objective is to define a strategyfor enhancing competitiveness at the macro- andmicro-levels, and increase trade and inward investment inthe non-oil sector to assist in poverty reduction efforts.The strategy implements one of the key objectives of theGovernment's program, i.e., enabling income generatingopportunities, and jobs in the non-oil sector. Theanalytical approach includes such program; and variousstrategies and analyses of the Government, donors,international financial institutions, private sector groups,and NGOs; relevant analyses of the Bank and InternationalMonetary Fund (IMF); as well as three assessments conductedfor this report: an analysis of administrative barriers toinward investment; an evaluation of trade policy and marketaccess agreements of Azerbaijan, including issues related tothe World Trade Organization (WTO) accession; and, a pilotstudy of the potential for a fruit and vegetable processing cluster.

[发布日期] 2003-11-20 [发布机构] Washington, DC

[学科分类] 社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

[关键词] AGRICULTURE;BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT;CAPITAL MARKET;CHEMICAL FERTILIZERS;COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGES