Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)

London Conference, 17 June, 2003

Statement by Ilham Aliyev,
First Vice-President of SOCAR.

Dear Chairmen, Ladies and Gentlemen!

First of all I would like to thank you for the invitation to participate in such an important occasion. From the very beginning, when this initiative was launched by Prime-Minister Mr. Tony Blair, Azerbaijan became a strong supporter of this initiative.

Transparency is one of the key elements of the oil strategy our country is conducting for the last almost ten years. Ten years of successful cooperation with the major oil companies of the world resulted in a multi trillion investments in our country. And today, Azerbaijan is a leader among all the former republics of the Soviet Union, as far as amount of the direct foreign investments per capita is concerned. And we, I am sure, will continue to keep this leading position. Only the next three-four years there will be almost 10 billion dollars investments in oil and gas and transportation sector of our economy. Therefore, we may clearly see the results of fair cooperation, transparency relations based on mutual trust and mutual respect, which our country has with our foreign partners.

The main reason of Azerbaijan being so attractive for foreign companies to invest huge amount of money, is a political and economic stability in our county will be investment climate, strong legislative protection of the foreign investments by our law and of course transparency in the period of production of oil and period of receiving revenues.

Azerbaijan established its State Oil Fund as soon as first substantial revenues started to come to our country. And today our state oil fund is a completely transparent structure, internationally audited, it publishes the information about its assets on a regularly basis, so that everybody in the country know what is happening and how much money the country has and the Fund is managed professionally and also taking into accordance recommendations of IMF and other international financial institutions. Taking into account the importance of geopolitical location of the county, we would like in the future also to enjoy the same level of cooperation between our country and the foreign partners. The pipelines, which are to be created and which are already in operation in Azerbaijan, is significantly influence the future development of the region. In add, to security, to prosperity, and well being to the people of the entire region, those, we cooperate in delivering our resources to the world markets.

As I mentioned before, Azerbaijan, from the very beginning expressed its support to the initiative of transparency in extractive industries. It corresponds to what we have done in the past and in the future, I am sure this policy will continue. We will promote this initiative inside our country and if it is necessary, we are ready to play an active part in promotion it outside our borders. We had full experience in creating transparency in the past and we have good will to continue this policy in the future.

Once again, I'd like to stress our full support to the initiative and wish the initiatives success in the future

Thank you.

Mr Ilham Aliyev, First Vice President of SOCAR, spoke on behalf of the Azerbaijan Government.

Last correction date of the file: 24/7/2008 - 14:54:33