Economy

After gaining independence in 1991 Azerbaijan became a member of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The banking system of Azerbaijan consists of the Central Bank, commercial banks, as well as non-bank credit institutions.

In the early years of the current century chronic high inflation was brought under control, and this led to the launching of a new currency - Azerbaijani manat, in January 1, 2006 in order to promote the acquisition of the economic reforms and erase the vestiges of unstable economic effects.

In 2008 Azerbaijan led the world as the top reformer, according to the World Bank’s report, with improvements on seven out of 10 indicators of regulatory reform.

The central bank's decision on moving from a fixed to a floating exchange-rate dated December 21, 2015 was inevitable step and negatively affected all citizens.

The Azerbaijani government made a decision on political adoption of the liberalization of the national currency (manat) exchange rate according to the successive information on impossibility of recovery in global oil prices in the wake of the growing political tensions in the Middle East region, especially after the Russian intervention in Syria.

There are indicators of deterioration of the national currency exchange rate against the dollar consecutively and the emergence of difficulties in buying dollars from banks despite the intervention of the Central Bank and the State Oil Fund to curb the collapse of the exchange rate in the stock market, but the indicators confirm the possibility of reducing the value of national currency "manat" significantly before the end of the year.