Azernews.Az

Over the last decade, Azerbaijan made significant progress in poverty reduction, thanks to strong economic growth and successful social programs, but several challenges remain, such as reducing non-income poverty and further building the human capital of the population to participate actively in future growth, a World Bank report finds.
The report, entitled Azerbaijan: Living Conditions Assessment Report, released Thursday, is part of the WB’s poverty assessment work and has been prepared in cooperation with the Azerbaijani government.
"The government of Azerbaijan and the World Bank have a long history of partnership in poverty monitoring and knowledge sharing," says the WB Country Manager Gregory Jedrzejczak. "This report, which analyzed the improvements in living conditions in Azerbaijan during the last decade, is the latest product of this collaborative effort."
Jedrzejczak pointed to the need for developing human capital in Azerbaijan. "Namely, it is time to begin investing in human capital. Thus, there is a need to increase the highly specialized population, which requires making investments in education."
The report, which covers the period between 2001 and 2008, says that Azerbaijan’s economy grew at an impressive rate of 17.3 percent per year, buoyed by the oil boom and substantial government spending. Azerbaijan significantly increased its social protection spending to provide income support to the poor and vulnerable and launched a successful large-scale targeted social assistance program in 2006. The report, prepared with the aid of the State Statistics Committee, also analyzes the main challenges in access to the education program and health care service delivery. Finally, it evaluates the targeted social assistance program and provides evidence of the extent to which the program has impacted the living conditions of the beneficiaries.
"Living standards in Azerbaijan improved considerably between 2001 and 2008, as result of the significant economic growth and policies that improved the distribution of income", said Lire Ersado, a WB Senior Economist and the lead author of the report. "Seizing the opportunity afforded by the oil boom, the government of Azerbaijan initiated large public sector investment programs and supportive policies to increase wages and social protection transfers to the population. These efforts have resulted in very significant reduction of the incidence of poverty."
According to Ersado, the poverty level in Azerbaijan dropped to 13 percent from 50 percent between 2001 and 2008, and the figure remained unchanged in 2009. According to him, urban residents saw their living standards improve more than rural residents. Ersado said 2.5 million people in the 9 million nation have overcome poverty and have been included in the medium-income category in the past ten years, which is remarkable.
The remaining challenges identified in the report include several persistent and hard-to-reach pockets of poverty, very low participation rates and large disparities in tertiary education, large out-of-pocket expenses in health care and financial barriers to utilization of health service by the poor, and growing urban-rural and regional disparities in economic activities and employment opportunities.
The WB said poverty had the biggest impact on education and health care. It said the admission rate in local universities is very low compared to other countries and is decreasing by the year. Regarding health care, the report said people living in the country’s regions rarely use health care services due to their low income levels.*