Japanese Bilateral Insight magazine publishes Azerbaijani ambassador’s interview
Tokyo, May 23 (AZERTAC). Japanese bilingual Bilateral Insight magazine has issued an interview with Azerbaijani ambassador Gursel Ismayilzade on its website.
The ambassador said: “Azerbaijan has had a culturally distinguished if turbulent history, and is now enjoying a period of rapid economic growth. The country’s GDP has risen in double figures for most of the 22 years since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, reaching a high point of 34.5 in 2006.”
Ismayilzade noted: “Foreign investment in Azerbaijan’s natural resources has always flourished. Just under half of the total $150 billion investment in the country’s economy over the past decade has come from outside Azerbaijan,”
“This began with the Rothschild and Nobel Brothers oil dynasties of the nineteenth century, who rushed to capitalize on Azerbaijan’s black gold after the first oil well was struck there in 1848.”
“The Soviet Union’s World War II campaign was powered by oil from Baku; almost 80% of Soviet oil came from Azerbaijan during the war. Post-independence, Azerbaijan welcomed foreign oil companies, and from 1995 this included the Japanese companies Itochu and Inpex, who bought shares worth 4.3% and 10.9% respectively of a Caspian Sea oil field called Azeri-Chiraq-Guneshli. However, Japan’s involvement in Azerbaijan’s energy industry is not limited to buying oil. Sumitomo pipes carry oil from the Caspian Sea to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, along the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, a project that is also part-owned by Inpex and Itochu.”
The ambassador highlighted the Azerbaijani government`s work to diversify the economy.
“Azerbaijan’s President, Ilham Aliyev, has taken measures to diversify the economy away from oil with the result that energy accounted for 47.3% of the domestic economy in 2012, down from nearly 90% ten years ago. The country is also investing in renewable energy. ‘We wish to build more solar power stations, and in this area we would like to work with Japanese companies.”
“Until recently, Azerbaijan, as an emerging nation, received Official Development Assistance aid from the Japanese government, but now the two countries work together as equals.”
“Japan extended loans, grants and technical assistance,” said Ismayilzade, adding “and as a result of this generosity there has been improvement in our water supply and sewage systems in the re-construction of a power plant and the supply of equipment for hospitals”.
The ambassador called on Japanese companies to invest in Azerbaijan: “We would like to see more Japanese IT companies in Azerbaijan.”
“Azerbaijan is especially keen to work with Japan on space technology, having launched its first telecommunications satellite into orbit in February. In my opinion, in the near future we will see the real results of cooperation in the space industry between Azerbaijan and Japan.”
“Other potentially fruitful areas of collaboration include tourism, agriculture and infrastructure. Between 200 and 300 Japanese tourists visit Baku every month.
Azerbaijan’s position at the center of the Eurasian landmass makes it a potentially useful distribution hub for Asian countries. We are inviting Japanese companies to locate production facilities in Azerbaijan, so we can then send their products on to European countries, Russia and the Middle East.”
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