President tackles entrepreneurial solution

Local entrepreneurs admit they find it beneficial to produce abroad and then import into Azerbaijan

President Aliyev appears to be getting determined to resolve the problems businessmen are facing in Azerbaijan, as he promised in a meeting with local entrepreneurs Thursday to take measures to eliminate all impediments to the development of entrepreneurship.

The President is also planning to meet with foreign businessmen active in the country.

450 entrepreneurs were taking part in the Thursday’s private meeting that lasted for seven hours. Journalists were not admitted to participate so that entrepreneurs could utter their woes openly. Also absent in the meeting were all ministers, but minister for economic development, to prevent would-be pressure on the businessmen.

The President was “shocked” to hear a number of entrepreneurial problems. It is ridiculous that they arise not just with the Ministry of Taxes, the Customs Committee, law enforcers, the Mayoral Office of Baku, but also with the sanitary and epidemic authorities.

Listed among the problems were ungrounded audits and checks, red tape practices in license allocation and illegal closure of trading outlets.

The President’s Executive Office has conducted a public pinion survey among 1000 national entrepreneurs to trace the most outstanding problems. According to the poll, 508 businessmen cited high taxes as obstacle for good entrepreneurial activities, while 441 pointed to illegal audits.

The President said he found that there are huge drawbacks in the operation of state bodies that enforce control over entrepreneurship activities. “Even, there are some criminal elements", he stated.

"Customs bodies and the Consumer Market and Trading Department of the Mayoral Office of Baku are impeding free trade, illegally closing down trading outlets", the President noted, pledging to take measures.

Pledge to help

President Aliyev vowed to help the entrepreneurs solve all their problems.

He assured that “the development of entrepreneurship is a state priority and all impediments in its way will be eliminated”.

"The President of Azerbaijan is a support and patron of all entrepreneurs", he stressed.

On his part, the minister for economic development Farhad Aliyev proposed to ban all economic audits, excluding tax ones, reduce licensable activities and simplify crediting mechanisms for small and medium business.

As, favorable loans totaling AZM5.4 billion instead of AZM37,3 billion were allocated to entrepreneurs from the state budget in 1999-2001.

He also noted the need for legalizing public earnings and drawing them into domestic economy.

Azerbaijan has achieved considerable progress in economic reforms, as most of the state property has been privatized. The progress is especially palpable in commerce.

Over the past five years the GDP volume had risen 2.6 times, real cash incomes of the population surged 3 times and an average monthly salary in the private sector made up AZM510,000. 74,000 legal entities were attending to entrepreneurship as of 2001. 140,000 had acquired properties and 1,350,000 hectares of land were provided to farmers.