12:33 - 26.12.2018

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December 26, Fineko/abc.az. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev gave an interview to TV channel Russia-24.

President Aliyev stated that in general, 2018 was successful for the country.

"From angle of internal political processes, Azerbaijan has successfully developed. There are no potential risks inside Azerbaijan. As for external potential risks, we manage to protect ourselves from them. Of course, we have attached great importance, as always, to economic reforms, and I think 2018 has become very important in this regard.

Suffice it to say that according to the World Bank's Doing Business assessment, Azerbaijan has risen 32 steps this year and took the 25th place in the world. That is, it says that those reforms in terms of ease of doing business, transparency, and support for entrepreneurship give good results. This, of course, increases our investment rating, and this year we’ve raised 10 billion dollars of investment," the president said.

He pointed out that inflation was slightly more than 2%, population’s income exceeded 9%, and foreign exchange reserves increased. External debt is about 20% of GDP and a strategy has been developed to reduce external debt to 10% of GDP in the coming years.

"I think it will be quite real. I must also say in this regard that our foreign exchange reserves are almost 5-fold higher than our foreign debt. That is, if desired, we can pay off to all creditors within a maximum of one year. That is, the macroeconomic situation is stable," President Aliyev said.