DEVELOPMENT CONCEPT “AZERBAIJAN - 2020: OUTLOOK FOR THE FUTURE”
Project
1. The current situation
Modern Azerbaijan has travelled a complicated and at the same time, honourable
path in the 20 years of its independence.
The deep crisis of the socialist public-political system and the breakup of a huge
country like the Soviet Union in the early 1990s resulted in political chaos, economic
paralysis and social collapse in Azerbaijan like in other post-Soviet countries. At that time,
military aggression against our country, the occupation of 20 per cent of the country’s
territory and the displacement of more than one million Azerbaijanis from their homes as a
result of the policy of genocide and occupation pursued by Armenian nationalists
extremely exacerbated the situation.
Beginning from the middle of the 1990s, our country gradually started to revive and
take confident steps towards resolving fateful issues under the leadership of the great
leader Heydar Aliyev. First of all, the sustainability of our state independence was ensured
and political stability was established inside the country.
At the same time, effective steps were taken to regulate the macroeconomic
balance and prevent the hyperinflation that existed at the time, and difficult social issues
were resolved with great determination.
The foundation of the use of Azerbaijan’s hydrocarbon reserves for the benefit of
the people was laid by the signing of the “Contract of the Century” in that period. At the
same time, well-thought out large-scale economic reforms were launched. The foundation
of the comprehensive institutional changes aimed at replacing the administrativecommand system inherited from the Soviet period with new free competitive relations,
purposeful policy measures to form a market economy system, important changes such as
the privatization of state-owned property and the formation of new property relations was
laid precisely in that period.
The further deepening of the large-scale reforms conducted in our country after
2000 created favourable opportunities for rapid development and allowed our society to
rise to a higher level of socioeconomic development. Important steps were taken to
improve the investment environment in the country and state administration was reestablished in compliance with modern criteria.
The dynamics of economic growth, which gained a new impulse through the
comprehensive extraction and export of natural resources and economic growth in
Azerbaijan even during the 2009 global economic crisis, show that the strategic line that
was chosen was being conducted successfully. Along with that, with the channelling of oil
revenues into the non-oil sector, serious achievements were secured in the development
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