Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev received Leland Rice, Editor-in-Chief of The Business Year magazine, and Betul Cakaloglu, Regional Director of the magazine, on May 25.

L.Rice stressed the importance of the Azerbaijani president’s participation and speech at the World Humanitarian Summit held in Istanbul.

He highlighted Azerbaijan’s role in strengthening international cooperation and the global economic processes.

Noting the importance of the World Humanitarian Summit, President Aliyev said that the summit was the first international humanitarian event in this format and its agenda covered many areas.

Referring to the issues of international economic cooperation, the head of state spoke about the work done for Azerbaijan's integration into the world economic system.

B. Cakaloglu in turn informed the Azerbaijani president about the work done by the magazine.

He stressed that the magazine has cooperating with Azerbaijan for about six years.

Rice said that in 2015 The Business Year magazine gave the award “The World’s Person of the Year” to President Ilham Aliyev for Azerbaijan’s key contributions to Europe’s energy security, for initiating and implementing the Southern Gas Corridor, Shahdeniz-2, TANAP, and TAP projects, for hosting important international events including the exemplary organizing of the European Games, for promoting Azerbaijan’s huge potential on a global scale, for the efforts to establish the East-West, North-South transport corridors, for turning Azerbaijan into a center of key transnational transport projects, for his massive support to developing dialogue between civilizations and cultures, for holding international humanitarian events aimed at promoting multicultural values and other successful efforts o ensure peace and security in the region.

The head of state in turn thanked the magazine management for naming him “The World’s Person of the Year”.