Overview: Azerbaijan is less developed industrially than either Armenia or Georgia, the other Transcaucasian states. It resembles the Central Asian states in its majority Muslim population, high structural unemployment, and low standard of living. The economy's most prominent products are oil, cotton, and gas. Production from the Caspian oil and gas field has been in decline for several years. With foreign assistance, the oil industry might generate the funds needed to spur industrial development. However, civil unrest, marked by armed conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region between Muslim Azeris and Christian Armenians, makes foreign investors wary. Azerbaijan accounted for 1.5% to 2% of the capital stock and output of the former Soviet Union. Azerbaijan shares all the formidable problems of the ex-Soviet republics in making the transition from a command to a market economy, but its considerable energy resources brighten its prospects somewhat. Old economic ties and structures have yet to be replaced. A particularly galling constraint on economic revival is the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, said to consume 25% of Azerbaijan's economic resources.

National product: GDP - purchasing power equivalent - $15.5 billion (1993 estimate from the UN International Comparison Program, as extended to 1991 and published in the World Bank's World Development Report 1993; and as extrapolated to 1993 using official Azerbaijani statistics, which are very uncertain because of major economic changes since 1990)

National product real growth rate: -13.3% (1993 est.)

National product per capita: $2,040 (1993 est.)

Inflation rate (consumer prices): 20% per month (average 1993); above 50% per month (February 1994)

Unemployment rate: 0.7% includes officially registered unemployed; also large numbers of underemployed workers (December 1993)

Budget:
revenues: $NA
expenditures: $NA, including capital expenditures of $NA

Exports: $355 million to outside the FSU countries (f.o.b., 1993)
commodities: oil and gas, chemicals, oilfield equipment, textiles, cotton (1991)
partners: mostly CIS and European countries

Imports: $240 million from outside the FSU countries (c.i.f., 1993)
commodities: machinery and parts, consumer durables, foodstuffs, textiles (1991)
partners: European countries

External debt: $NA

Industrial production: growth rate -7% (1993)

Electricity:
capacity: 6,025,000 kW
production: 22,300 kWh
consumption per capita: 2,990 kWh (1992)

Industries: petroleum and natural gas, petroleum products, oilfield equipment; steel, iron ore, cement; chemicals and petrochemicals; textiles

Agriculture: cotton, grain, rice, grapes, fruit, vegetables, tea, tobacco; cattle, pigs, sheep and goats

Illicit drugs: illicit cultivator of cannabis and opium poppy; mostly for CIS consumption; limited government eradication program; transshipment point for illicit drugs to Western Europe

Economic aid:
recipient: wheat from Turkey

Currency: 1 manat = 100 gopik
Exchange rates: NA

Fiscal year: calendar year

NOTE: The information regarding Azerbaijan on this page is re-published from the 1995 World Fact Book of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. No claims are made regarding the accuracy of Azerbaijan Economy 1995 information contained here. All suggestions for corrections of any errors about Azerbaijan Economy 1995 should be addressed to the CIA.