BAKU, Azerbaijan: With the birth of a baby girl in Baku on April 6, the population of the former Soviet Republic has reached 10 million, a very significant event in the history of independent Azerbaijan.
Engulfed with happiness, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and the first lady Mehriban Aliyeva visited the hospital to see the newborn baby and meet with her parents.
They congratulated the people of Azerbaijan and the parents of the baby on the occasion while the first lady also held the baby girl in her arms.
Despite Armenia’s military aggression since early 1990s, the population of Azerbaijan is steadily growing and this is one of the main factors driving the country’s social and economic life.
As of January 2019, 52.8 percent of Azerbaijan’s total population is urban with the remaining 47.2 percent being rural while 50.1 percent of the total population is female. The sex ratio in the same year was 0.99 males per female.
In addition, the Azerbaijani diaspora is found in 42 countries and in turn there are many centers for ethnic minorities inside Azerbaijan including the German cultural society “Karelhaus”, Slavic cultural center, Azerbaijani-Israeli community, Kurdish cultural center, International Talysh Association, Lezgin national center “Samur”, Azerbaijani-Tatar community, and Crimean Tatars society etc.
Azerbaijan led the world as the top reformer in 2007/08 with improvements on seven out of 10 indicators of regulatory reform. Azerbaijan started operating a one-stop shop in January 2008 that halved the time, cost and number of procedures to start a business.
According to the World Bank’s Doing Business Report 2019, Azerbaijan improved its position in the ease of doing business rank from 57 to 25. As a result of implementing a record number of reforms mainly involving institutional changes among the 10 top improvers, to do business in Azerbaijan became easier such as time and cost to get construction permit reduced significantly (time by 80 days and cost by 12.563 AZN), process of connecting electricity grid rationalized, as well as getting credit simplified.
