AZERBAIJAN - Economy
Managing Partner, KPMG Azerbaijan
Bio
Vugar Aliyev is a Managing Partner of KPMG in Azerbaijan. He started his career at another of the big four firms in Azerbaijan in 1996 and joined KPMG in July 2011. Over the last 17 years, he gained a thorough auditing and advisory experience with banks, insurance, leasing, and real estate companies operating in Azerbaijan, Russia, Georgia, and Turkey. He has a PhD in International Civil Law from Baku State University.
KPMG is a strong brand. It is an international company, which has more than 162,000 professionals working together and delivering value in 155 countries worldwide. In addition, we have gathered a professional local team with many years of experience and deep expertise in the market, whom we are proud of. Last, but the most important, is our clients, both international and local, who stay loyal and with whom we are working closely on daily basis.
Approximately 90% of our staff is local professionals, and this percentage is growing. In 2014 alone, we hired 21 new local employees. At the same time, our global membership provides us with access to an enormous amount of best practice, knowledge, and methodology to use in Azerbaijan. International experience helps to create indispensable experience for talented local employees, and it is a huge advantage for our clients; we offer decisions that proved their efficiency worldwide.
Despite of some crisis signs in the region, Azerbaijani economy still shows growth, and we have a positive balance of trade. Actually, all of these are the yields of proper economic policy. Over the past decade, the non-oil sector increased by 2.5 fold, and its share in GDP reached 68%. It is no coincidence that, in spite of the volatility in the energy market and decline in oil prices over the last year, the economy has grown up by 5.3. I believe that 2015 will be a difficult year for all countries with rich energy resources; however, our difference is that we have tried to diversify the economy on time. Since 1995, Azerbaijan’s economy has attracted more than $200 billion of investments, 62% of which was invested in non-oil sector.
Azerbaijan is an undisputable leader of the region. GDP for the past 10 years has increased by 3 fold, its volume per capita 2.6 times, industry 3.6 times, agriculture 1.4 times, and state budget revenues 12 fold. At present, Azerbaijan’s economy comprises more than 75% of the economy of the South Caucasus.
During the last year and a half, we were organizers, sponsors, and partners of many events. Our main objectives in this activity are to share our knowledge with institutional business community and our customers, create the network, and bring the best practices of various industries to Azerbaijan. The aims of these events that we sponsor are the same: we are embarking on useful projects for our society and business. For us, sponsorship is the commitment for the community.
As a company, we will continue as a center to deliver value-adding product. As for the business segments growing in Azerbaijan, we forecast the development of consulting service area, and we will work intensively in this direction. We also focus on the development of industries, such as ICT, transportation, and the rapidly growing non-oil sectors.
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