Baku, Azerbaijan, May 7
By Azad Hasanli - Trend:
Seventy-three percent of entrepreneurs in Azerbaijan are optimistic about the future of their companies, according to a survey of CFOs and top management of leading companies in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Russia, conducted in March this year by Deloitte & Touche LLC.
According to the survey, 20 percent of respondents believe that the situation in their companies will remain unchanged, while 7 percent expect deterioration of the situation.
“The main reasons for this [improvement of the forecast for Azerbaijan’s credit rating] are the gradual decline in the dollarization in the country, stabilization of the manat rate since April 2017 and, as a result, the growth of confidence in it, as well as the process of restructuring of the International Bank of Azerbaijan, which had a positive impact on the banking sector as a whole,” reads the survey.
At the same time, representatives of the services sector (88 percent) and financial services sector (86 percent) are the most optimistic about their companies. For comparison, in Georgia and Russia, only 60 and 36 percent of respondents, respectively, are optimistic about their companies.
Sixty-seven percent of the respondents believe that the average salary in their companies will grow by 10 percent. This is while in 2017, only 42 percent of respondents held such an opinion.
Forty-three percent of the respondents expect that the staff in their companies will grow by an average of 12 percent, according to the survey. This is while in 2017, only 21 percent considered so.
Over the past six months, expectations for income growth in Azerbaijan have improved significantly. Thus, 77 percent of respondents believe that their companies’ revenues will grow by an average of 16 percent and only 6 percent think that their companies’ revenues will decrease by an average of 15 percent, while 17 percent of respondents believe that revenues will remain at the same level.
These forecasts significantly exceed the results of the survey in 2017, when only 54 percent of respondents were confident in the growth of their companies’ revenues.
Sixty percent of financial executives believe in the growth of operating expenses [an average of 9 percent] of their companies. Only 10 percent of respondents believe that their expenses will decrease [by an average of 9 percent], and 30 percent of respondents believe that these figures will remain approximately at the same level.
The majority of respondents (73 percent) also expect an increase in the operating profit of their companies by an average of 8 percent. Seven percent of respondents hold the opposite opinion.
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