Baku, Fineko/abc.az. The Azerbaijan Marketing Society (AMS) marks the need to correct the country’s foreign trade orientation in the face of changes in world markets - a trend of return of production capacity, primarily by American companies, to domestic markets.

AMS chairman Rahim Huseynov has stated that the Society has always been for large-scale research of potential export markets for Azerbaijani goods, woks and services.

"Unfortunately, today no one state organization, even having the direct authority, conducts such research. Even the Azerbaijan Export & Investment Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO), the Charter of which says of study of foreign markets, does not carry out such work," Huseynov emphasized.

At that, no one public organization is able to conduct such studies because of deficit of financing.

"It would be effective to take a sample of the activities of JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization), which conducts study of foreign markets for Japanese goods and transfer free of charge their results to the national business. On the basis of these surveys Japanese companies can analyze their perspectives on certain markets and make business decisions," Huseynov said.

And Azerbaijan’s business in this area is disarmed. This is very disturbing because of increased competition on world markets. American business is increasingly withdrawing its production from China to the United States itself, or Mexico. As a result, Chinese manufacturers start dumping and introducing to other markets. In addition, the Arab spring, the change of regime and economic reorientation in a number of countries strengthens the external pressure even upon on the Azerbaijani market. Thus, textile consumer goods from Egypt have already appeared in Baku, which are 10 times (!) cheaper than goods of their main supplier for Azerbaijan - Turkey, or even half the price (!) of low-quality Chinese goods. The state of affairs is similar at other consumer goods markets.

Azerbaijan still remains a country of purely raw material export (up 98% of export production) due to oil and gas. At best, the country also exports semi-finished products (chemical products, construction materials). Lack of the World Trade Organization (WTO) member status partially protects the local producer on the domestic market, but only partially.

09.07.2012 09:41