There were several reasons for the creation of the Azerbaijan Investments Promotion and Advisory Foundation. But first was the acknowledgement by the government of the necessity to have a special body which would work on Azerbaijan's image as an investment destination. After the meeting of the late president Mr.Heydar Aliyev with the entrepreneurs, the Ministry of Economic Development was instructed to establish this fundation. At present, the Agency has 4 major functions: policy advertising, this part of our work needs a lot of communication and joint work with the government, the 2nd is the image building which comes together with the new generation of investors. This is important in order to target foreign direct investment. Most investors don't even know about the geographical location of Azerbaijan. They don't know about Azerbaijan. We establish relations with Europe and Asia as well. For ex, we have established relations with Singapore which is an investment exporting country unlike Azerbaijan that´s an investment importing one. And we conduct negotiations and try to find such kind of synergies and coordinate our work. Geographically, Azerbaijan is located at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. But economically, we establish relations both with European and Asian companies.

Did you actually look at other countries' Investment Promotion Agencies prior to finding your own model of development?

At the time when we were developing the concept of the foundation we definitely looked at the experience of other countries in this sector. We looked at countries like Ireland, Singapore etc. And we had a great assistance from the Foreign Investment Adviser Services. As a result I think we have quite an innovative model for the foundation. We have established the agency as a public-private initiative. Even though it was established by the government and founded by the Ministry of Economic Development, the Board of Trustees is the supreme authority of the agency. This board consists of representatives from 4 groups: the 1st one is composed of the Ministry for Economic Development, Ministry of Taxes, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Justice, State Customs Committee and the National Bank of Azerbaijan and we expect the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to join the group. The 2nd group consists of the international community: EBRD, IFC, UNDP and a number of others. The 3rd group: foreign investors working in Azerbaijan. 4th group: representatives of the local business community. We try to promote local investment as well. As you see we are using the public-private initiative which is innovative.

As the agency was established only recently, what still needs to be developed in order to get a fully fledged foundation?

Yes, we are very young as our agency was created only 6 months ago and we still have a long way to go. But we think we could settle the major issues pretty fast.
Every 3 months the president of the agency makes a report on the activity of the foundation to the Board of Trustees. We have already begun servicing the investors. We are the active participant of the transactions in the telecommunication sector, within the framework of the privatization process. Generally speaking, we are satisfied and we think that we provide a good support to investors. We also hold round-tables and we give suggestions to the government concerning different sectors of economy. We are working with the IFC project on developing the leasing sector. Several stages have been provided within the project and obviously the first stage is to provide the necessary regulation framework.

So, what are your priorities in the short run?

Development of non-oil sectors and regional development are the top priorities. The reason is that the oil & gas sector attracts most of the attention from the world investment community. Traditionally, the energy sector requires long-term investments. And it gives out a good message about stability in Azerbaijan. But on that basis we need to put much more effort to achieve the same results in the non-oil sectors. The most important of them is the agricultural development. Azerbaijan has a great potential and can become a major exporter of agro-food to Russia or any nearby country. One of our main priorities is the privatization of large state-owned enterprises which used to be the major enterprises of the soviet time. But today they have low-production versus capacity and there is a need to identify strategic investors.

We are preparing the overview of the agricultural sector in Azerbaijan as a short presentation that we will address to potential investors. This work requires a lot of efforts as we have to convince foreign investors to come to Azerbaijan. We also work actively on training our staff in order to improve our services. As it is a new service in Azerbaijan, it is very important to have high-quality specialists. Currently, our number of employees is 80. We don't like to overstaff. The educational background of our employees is diversified. Among them are lawyers or bankers but also people with experience in government services… our agency must be like a bridge between the government and the investment community.

Can you tell us more about your professional background?

I was born in Baku and got my first education at the international law faculty at Baku State University. Then I got my master's degree in the USA. I spent some years in the USA as practitioner and then I returned to Azerbaijan. I worked in different positions. I also completed my study in economics. I worked as an adviser to the minister of Economic Development. And after the establishment of this agency I was appointed as its president.