Azerbaijan Company & Beneficial Ownership Directory

Analysis

What this data actually tells you about Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan’s economy grew 4.1% in real terms in 2024, up from 1.4% in 2023, according to the State Statistical Committee of the Republic of Azerbaijan and confirmed by the IMF’s 2025 Article IV mission (April 2025). Nominal GDP reached 126.3 billion manat, equivalent to roughly $74.3 billion; GDP per capita stood at approximately $7,284 in nominal terms and $25,089 on a PPP basis. Growth was driven overwhelmingly by the non-oil economy, which expanded 6.2% (non-oil-and-gas industrial output specifically grew 7.3%), while the hydrocarbon sector grew only about 0.3-1.1% as gas production gains offset a decline in oil output. The national currency, the Azerbaijani manat (AZN), has been pegged to the US dollar at a fixed rate of 1.7000 AZN/USD since 2017. Inflation ended 2024 at 4.9% year-on-year (within the Central Bank’s 4%±2 target band), with average annual inflation at 2.2% for the year. The economy remains structurally dependent on oil and gas, produced and marketed primarily through the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) and the BP-operated Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) and Shah Deniz fields, but the government has pursued a sustained non-oil diversification push visible in manufacturing, construction, transport, ICT and tourism growth in 2024-2025. Counterparties verify a specific counterparty’s current oil-versus-non-oil revenue exposure directly.

Azerbaijan’s exports remain dominated by hydrocarbons: crude petroleum ($14.6 billion), petroleum gas ($8.33 billion), refined petroleum ($432 million), and gold ($212 million) were the top 2024 export categories. Italy was the top single trade partner ($10.7 billion in exports), followed by Turkey ($3.89 billion) and Russia ($1.18 billion). Total foreign trade turnover for January-November 2024 reached $42.8 billion, with a trade surplus of about $5.27 billion. Natural gas exports totaled 25.2 bcm in 2024, of which exports to Europe rose 8.6% to 12.9 bcm via the Southern Gas Corridor/Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), a route whose strategic importance has grown since the EU sought to diversify from Russian gas; new markets opened in 2024-2025 include Slovenia, Croatia, and, from January 2025, Austria and Germany, bringing the total number of countries receiving Azerbaijani pipeline gas to 16. FDI inflows totaled roughly $7.0 billion in 2024, with Türkiye ($1.22bn) and Hungary ($1.02bn) as leading sources; total FDI stock stood at about $32.7 billion (≈42.7% of GDP). The State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ), founded in 1999, held $61.7 billion in assets as of September 30, 2024. A genuinely major and dated current economic story is state-led reconstruction of Karabakh and East Zangezur, recaptured by Azerbaijan from Armenian-backed forces in the 2020 war and fully secured after the September 2023 operation: the government has invested about $14.7 billion in infrastructure and housing there over the past five years, with a further $2.35 billion budgeted for 2025 alone and a cumulative $18 billion planned by 2028, under the “Great Return” state program targeting resettlement of roughly 140,000 IDPs by end-2026. Counterparties verify a specific counterparty’s current Karabakh-reconstruction-linked exposure and gas-export-contract status directly.

Azerbaijan’s population reached 10,224,889 as of January 1, 2025, rising further to about 10.24 million by June 2025. The labor force totaled roughly 1,749,400 people as of June 1, 2024, with 893,100 employed in the public sector and 856,300 in the private sector; the unemployment rate stood at about 5.2-5.5% through 2025. On regional/geopolitical developments: on September 19-20, 2023, Azerbaijan conducted a military operation it termed “anti-terrorist” in Nagorno-Karabakh, after which the region’s separatist authorities agreed to dissolve their government by the end of that year (dissolution announced September 28, 2023). In the following ten days, more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians — over 80% of the region’s residents — left Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia, a displacement described by multiple humanitarian and governmental bodies including the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), following a preceding ten-month blockade of the Lachin Corridor. On the peace process: Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a joint declaration in Washington on August 8, 2025; as of December 2025-January 2026 reporting, the peace treaty text has reportedly been finalized/initialed but not yet formally signed, with Baku maintaining that it will not sign until Armenia removes territorial claims to Azerbaijani land from its constitution, a change Armenia’s government is not expected to pursue before its parliamentary elections planned for June 2026. Separately, Azerbaijan hosted the UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku from November 11-24, 2024, at which parties adopted the “Baku Climate Unity Pact,” including a new climate finance goal tripling developed-country-led finance mobilization to at least $300 billion/year by 2035. Counterparties verify a specific counterparty’s actual current exposure to the Karabakh region and peace-process-linked risk directly rather than assume the situation is fully resolved.