BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 4. Average annual inflation is forecast at 5.3% in Azerbaijan next year, Finance Minister Sahil Babayev said today during a meeting of the parliamentary Committee on Economic Policy, Industry and Entrepreneurship, where the draft law "On the State Budget of Azerbaijan for 2027" was presented for its first reading.
The minister remarked that the average annual price of crude oil for the coming year was set at $65 per barrel.
"Of course, assessing the current geopolitical situation, we believe that oil prices are highly likely to be higher. However, to maintain the fiscal framework and ensure unified fiscal discipline and forecasting over the medium term, we have adopted a conservative approach and based our projections on an oil price of $65 per barrel," Babayev pointed out.
He noted that the manat's exchange rate was set at 1.7 manat per dollar. The state debt forecast for the end of 2026 stands at 20% of GDP.
“That is, we project state debt at 20% of GDP. By the end of the medium-term period, namely 2030, we expect this figure to remain almost unchanged at 20.3%.
Currently, our total public debt stands at 23.9 billion manat ($14.06 billion). This is 2.8 percentage points lower than at the beginning of this year. Today, Azerbaijan is among the countries with the best public debt-to-GDP ratios in the world. Of our debt portfolio, 16.2 billion manat ($9.53 billion) represents domestic public debt, while 7.7 billion manat ($4.53 billion) represents external public debt," Babayev added.
