World Economic Forum hails Azerbaijan's success in creating favourable environment for startups

Azerbaijan has achieved success in creating a favourable environment for start-ups and innovations.

The progress is obvious in the creation of numerous institutions and programmes aimed at supporting business development and promoting innovations, such as large-scale events organised by the government, the development of technology parks and business incubators, Caliber.Az reports citing the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) report “IDEA: Investing in the Digital Economy of Azerbaijan”.

According to the report, the Ministry of Economy is developing a bill “On Innovation Activity” in accordance with the decree of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan to ensure coordination and development in this sphere.

The digital economy in Azerbaijan has been recently perceived as an integral component of socio-economic development goals. The role of foreign direct investments in promoting digital growth and enhancing global competitiveness is important for Azerbaijan in line with its national vision of diversifying the economy and reducing dependence on extractive industries, the document says.

The Azerbaijani government pays significant attention to attracting foreign investments, implementing reforms and stimulating the private sector through a comprehensive Socio-Economic Development Strategy for 2022-2026.

According to the report, despite the main part of foreign direct investments in Azerbaijan falls on the oil and gas sector, proceeding from the activity of foreign investors operating in the country, most of new investment projects (between January 2016 and April 2023) covered such sectors as financial/business services, software and IT services, and industrial equipment manufacturing.

The Azerbaijani government is implementing large-scale reforms focusing on the digital economy. Among the ongoing measures, the authors of the report note the development of the Digital Economy Development Strategy and the Socio-Economic Development Strategy for 2022–2026. A special working group has been created in the country under the auspices of the Azerbaijani Centre for Analysis and Coordination of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4SIM) to develop this strategy to create a sustainable and competitive digital economy since December 2022, WEF experts said.