Azerbaijan ranks 70th on Forbes’ best countries for business list

The American business magazine Forbes compiled a rating of the best countries for doing business in 2018, in which Azerbaijan occupies the 70th place.

The list of the top 153 countries for doing business was headed by the UK, while at the very bottom of the rating were Libya, Afghanistan, Haiti, Gambia and Chad, taking 149 to 153 places respectively.

Georgia took the 52nd place, Russia- 58th, and Armenia- 88th.

The magazine evaluates 153 countries on 15 criteria: ownership, innovation, taxation, technology, level of corruption, freedom (personal, commercial and financial), bureaucracy and investor protection.

Azerbaijan is doing its best to diversify the national economy on the basis of further development of the non-oil sector.

To put into effect this plan, the government encourages business doing in the country and to support entrepreneurs through creating necessary conditions for the development of a healthy business environment.

The government has suspended inspection of entrepreneurs’ activities until 2021.

During the period of the law’s validity, only tax audits, quality control of medicines by relevant executive authorities, verification of compliance with safety regulations and safety control of food products, as well as checks on cases that threaten the health and life of people, national security and economic interests may be carried out.

Moreover, in order to support entrepreneurship the government creates many other conditions as, issuance of the investment incentives documents following the approval of amendments proposed to the Tax Code of the country.

Under the investment incentives document, half of the revenue of an individual entrepreneur, profits of legal entity are exempted from income tax for seven years. Import of equipment for the implementation of the projects is also exempt of VAT and customs duties.

Also, the state refunds 3-6 percent of the customs value of goods to non-oil exporters within the framework of mechanisms on promoting exports of non-oil products.

It is also planned to create the Agency of Small and Medium Enterprises and the Guarantee Credit Fund in 2017-2018.

Besides, there is the National Fund for Entrepreneurship Support (NFES) under the Azerbaijani Economy Ministry that has been operating since 1992 to provide preferential loans from the state budget for small and medium business in an effort to develop entrepreneurship in the Republic of Azerbaijan.

The NFES allocated 190 million manats ($111.7 million) for financing projects of local business entities in 2016.