Azerbaijan to invest about $ 4 billion in ICT sector

t is expected that investment in the development of the ICT sector in Azerbaijan will amount to about $4 billion by 2020, the Azerbaijani Minister of Communications and High Technologies Ali Abbasov told local media.

The interview states that in accordance with the “Azerbaijan 2020: Vision for the Future” development concept, the volume of the ICT sector in the country will increase by 4.5-5 times at an average annual growth rate of 15-20 percent.

The minister stressed that Azerbaijan’s ICT sector revenues will amount to 8-8.5 billion, or about 10 percent of GDP by 2020.

Abbasov also noted that the development project of broadband Internet (“Fiber to the home”), will initially cover 2014-2016 in Azerbaijan.

Some 103 million manat is to be allocated from the Azerbaijani State Oil Fund for the implementation of the project in the first stage.

The cost of the project ” Fiber to the home ” is estimated at more than 450 million manat. The project is considered highly profitable. Around 30-35 per cent of its total cost will be financed through reinvestments beginning from the second year of its implementation.

The ultimate goal of the project is to provide the whole country, including remote rural settlements with high-speed Internet in the range of 30-100 Mbit / s and bring the number of broadband Internet users up to 85 percent. This will allow Azerbaijan to reach the level of the world developed countries by 2017.

At present, around 70 per cent of the population uses the Internet in Azerbaijan. The penetration rate of broadband Internet among the population is 50 percent.