Economy ———-
Economic overview: Azerbaijan is less developed industrially than either Armenia or Georgia, the other Transcaucasian states. It resembles the Central Asian states in its majority nominally 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, but the November 1994 ratification of the $7.5 billion oil deal with a consortium of Western companies should generate the funds needed to spur future industrial development. 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 long-term prospects. Baku has only recently begun making progress on economic reform, and old economic ties and structures have yet to be replaced. Whereas the economies of most of the former Soviet republics had begun to bottom out in 1995, Azerbaijan's economy continued to plummet because of its late start on economic reform.
GDP: purchasing power parity - $11.5 billion (1995 estimate as extrapolated from World Bank estimate for 1994)
GDP real growth rate: -17% (1995 est.)
GDP per capita: $1,480 (1995 est.)
GDP composition by sector: agriculture: NA% industry: NA% services: NA%
Inflation rate (consumer prices): 85% (1995 est.)
Labor force: 2.789 million
by occupation: agriculture and forestry 32%, industry and
construction 26%, other 42% (1990)
Unemployment rate: 2.3% includes officially registered unemployed;
also large numbers of unregistered unemployed and underemployed
workers (December 1995)
Budget:
revenues: $465 million
expenditures: $488 million, including capital expenditures of $NA
(1995 est.)