Economic development of Azerbaijan was positive, and, as I said, economy is stable. We managed to attract more than $350 billion of direct investments, almost half from foreign sources in the last 20 years. Our investment plans continue because today investors look for stable places.

Axar.az reports that President Ilham Aliyev said this during his speech at the opening ceremony of the 2026 Annual Meetings of the Islamic Development Bank Group.

"Unfortunately, as time passes, the number of stable locations does not grow. This is unfortunate—today's reality. Therefore, good investment climate, investment protections, legislative base, and also already accomplished projects allow us to attract investments now not only in energy but the non-energy sector, which is, by the way, one of our priorities. We spoke about that 16 years ago at the ISDB Annual Meeting in Baku, and since that time we managed to transform.

So today the share of the non-oil and gas sector in our GDP is more than 70%, which is a remarkable achievement, but still we have to work hard in order to continue to change the balance of oil, gas, and the non-oil and gas sector in our export. Today, absolute majority of our export is energy resources. So we are working very hard in order to change the situation, and for that, of course, we need more reforms, more investments, and also we need new markets, and this is a problem. Because the struggle for markets has become very active, I would use this word. So diversification of economy is already a reality, but we have to continue, definitely.

We managed to reduce our foreign debt, that was a target put by me some years ago, and we achieved it, and even maybe more than we planned. Today our foreign debt is only 6% of our GDP, so we started to borrow again. There was a break, but we started to borrow again, and of course, the first financial institution we approached was the Islamic Development Bank, because of our strong connections, because of our shared history, and a very productive and constructive relationship," the head of state said.