OREANDA-NEWS. December 11, 2009. President Ilham Aliyev had a meeting with his French counterpart Nikola Sarkozi. During the meeting both parties stressed successful development of two countries’ relationships in political, economic and cultural areas.

Both leaders covered issues of co-operation in economic, energy and non-oil sectors and exchanged views about settlement of Nagorno Garabagh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

President Aliyev also had meetings with Bernard Accoyer, the chairman of the French National Assembly, who underlined special importance of French-Azerbaijani links in period of the global economic crisis and foreign minister Bernard Kushner, with whom he discussed the current condition of the process of Garabagh conflict settlement and exchanged opinions about regional and a range of international problems.

The Azerbaijani President also met with members of MEDEF (Mouvement des Entreprises de France; in English: Movement of the French Enterprises). President Aliyev pointed out that last year trade turnover between France and Azerbaijan totaled about US2.5 bn.
“I consider that our economy is already not transition despite transition period took a little more time. All the necessary reforms have been conducted. I think that in the upcoming years stable development of Azerbaijani economy will create better conditions for mutual economic co-operation. We have a concrete program of measures. This is already the second program. The first one was adopted in 2004 and covered period until 2008. We have a clear program of actions for the next five years (2009-13) that bases itself on financial and technical possibilities and available work of experience with international business circles. This program will promote mainly to realization of still existing significant economic, social and infrastructure projects in our country.

In 2010 our state investment program financed by State Budget and State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) will total almost US4.5–5 bn. The same volume of finances will be invested in various industries of our economy. We obtained realization all the targets in oil and gas sector and in the forthcoming years will receive profit from the work done so far.

“Now our priorities are information technologies, agriculture, infrastructure, education, public health sector, environment,” the Azerbaijani leader said.