Scandals Around the Azerbaijani Economy are Continuing

• 07.16.2017, 14:30
•  Region,  World,  Analytics

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It has become impossible for the authorities of Azerbaijan to hide the poor economy of the country from the people. Since 2015, the effects of economic illusions have been vividly expressed by the constant devaluation of the national currency, which would not stop even with the periodical state intervention. It caused great social dissatisfaction inside the country until 2016 war initiated by Azerbaijan deviated the public attention to external problems of the country.

However, it had a temporary effect as 2017 has been marked by the continuing scandals surrounding the Azerbaijani economy. The biggest of them is probably the one connected with the Kazakh pensions kept in the bankrupt bank of Azerbaijan. 

Thus, according to Regnum agency, Kazakhstan's unified accumulative pension fund has invested more than 71.6 billion tenges in the International Bank of Azerbaijan, after which the bank was declared bankrupt in the first half of this year. According to the same source, the International Bank of Azerbaijan is one of the two state banks of Azerbaijan and was the major subject of the country's banking system. According to ARNA press agency, the bank's losses in 2016 exceeded one billion dollars. Despite the fact that on June 15, a member of Kazakhstan's Unified Pension Fund Kairat Kelimbetov announced that all funds invested by Kazakhstan will be returned to Kazakhstan, the situation in Azerbaijan's economy did not improve.

One scandal was followed by another. The Azeri people learned about the bankruptcy of their banks from international newsletters. In an analytical article titled "Why Do We Learn About our Banks' Problems from Abroad?" posted on Haqqin.az website, the author presents the situation of the banking system, stating that the relevant authorities are hiding the bankruptcy of a particular bank or not giving any accurate information so long as some international agency provides the full information. It is clear that in parallel with the well-known Azerbaijani habit of hiding the reality, there is also a desire to maintain the myth about the "mighty Azerbaijani economy".

In the recent years, the Azerbaijani authorities have tried to convince their own society that they have a perfect, developing economy. That's what they did by creating "economic balloons", carrying out large-scale events, and so on. Just like every economy, the Azerbaijani one has a unique function of self-regulation, in the framework of which these "bubbles" emerge. And everything gets more obvious when major events are taking place in the global economy, such as the sharp decline in world oil prices recently.