Azernews.Az

By Rasana Gasimova

Agriculture plays an important role in diversification of Azerbaijan’s economy.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) will present a new agricultural risk management platform in Azerbaijan, Trend has reported, citing the IFC chief specialist Leyla Huseynli.

Speaking at the “Microfinance Development in Azerbaijan” investment fair, Huseynli said that the new CLARA (Cash-flow linked Agriculture Risk Assessment tool) platform presented by the IFC covers 40 products. Each of them represents a certain risk management mechanism in the field of agriculture in accordance with the realities of Azerbaijan.

CLARA a new online service designed to quickly and efficiently assess agricultural production risks. The service helps to make prediction calculations for farm enterprises based on technological maps for various agricultural products. Technological maps containing all the necessary information and instructions for the production of various agricultural products will be stored in the service database.

The CLARA tool was developed as part of an IFC project aimed at improving access to financing for farmers and small and medium-sized businesses.

Azerbaijan became a member of IFC in 1995. To date, IFC has invested $473 million, of which $73 million was mobilized from other lenders, financing 56 long-term projects across a range of sectors, including financial services, infrastructure, and manufacturing sectors.

The volume of agricultural production in Azerbaijan amounted to 5 billion 206.7 million manats ($121.2 million) in January-August 2019, which is 6.2 percent higher than that of the same period in 2018.

The volume of livestock production amounted to 2 billion 557 million manats ($1.5 billion), crop production - 2 billion 649.7 million manats ($381 million). Growth in livestock production amounted to 3.1 percent, and in crop production – to 9.2 percent.

The country produced 332,600 tons of meat (a 3 percent increase), 1 million 386 thousand tons of milk (a 1.5 percent increase), 1 billion 242.2 million eggs (a 6.9 percent increase), 15,400 tons of wool (a 1.5 percent increase). In addition, 643.7 tons of silkworm cocoons were produced (a 25.3 percent increase) in January-August 2019.

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