Czech Republic and Azerbaijan are going to hold economic consultations, Martina Tauberova, deputy Minister for EU and international trade at Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade told Trend.
“Economic relations of the entire world have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Czech-Azerbaijani economic relations were not exceptional in the Q2 of 2020. Unfortunately, after the extremely promising beginning of the year, when the mutual turnover increased by 4 percent (January – March 2020), the statistics of the first month of the pandemic and lockdowns show a decrease of the mutual turnover by 15 percent. However, it needs to be emphasized that these numbers are preliminary and the final statistics of the effect of border closures will be available during the following months only,” said Tauberova.
She said there are many lessons learned from COVID-19, especially in communication with partners.
“We have started to communicate with them by online platforms. Several economic consultations took place during the past three months. This tool helps us to keep the communication going and solve the ongoing issues even though there are no possibilities to having face to face meetings. With Azerbaijan, we are looking for a suitable date of our economic consultation as well and we are quite optimistic about finding it in the following weeks,” the deputy minister added.
She recalled that the overarching framework for the Czech-Azerbaijani relations represents the Declaration on Strategic Partnership between the countries from 2015.
“This crucial document was signed on the level of presidents and both presidential administrations monitor its implementation on governmental level. An important role in developing our relations has Joint Commission on Economic, Scientific-Technical and Cultural Cooperation between the Government of the Czech Republic and the Government of the Republic of Azerbaijan. The main function of the Commission is the coordination and development of mutual, not only economic relations. The last, Fourth Session was held in Baku in January 2017. The date of the next 5th Session that is supposed to be held in Prague is being discussed in the working order. We hope that the final date will be revealed as soon as possible after the pandemic situation will get to normal and the borders are open and safe for traveling,” said Tauberova.