President Ilham Aliyev: This year has been declared Year of Agriculture

Baku, January 31, AzerTAc “This year has been declared the Year of Agriculture. It is a priority for us. Further development of agriculture and industry is the main focus of the non-oil sector. Reforms are under way. This has been mentioned here. On the one hand, structural reforms are carried out and, on the other, measures are taken to improve the efficiency of agriculture,” said President Ilham Aliyev at the conference on outcomes of the first year of implementation of the “State Program on socio-economic development of districts of the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2014-2018”. “Food security is of great importance for any country. In Soviet times we could not provide ourselves with staple foods. Not because we couldn’t but because in those years, in the Soviet period, there was division. Azerbaijan provided oil, heavy industry, petrochemicals, cotton, grapes, etc. But it was impossible to dynamically develop animal husbandry at the time. Therefore, we imported the basic foods from Russia and Ukraine. This was the division. Such was the system of the Soviet economy. Therefore, in the early years of independence we were largely dependent on imports. We have taken very serious measures in recent years to change this situation, and we can say today that we have achieved food security,” the head of state noted.