The congress met on 2 October at the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, and the presidential site published the speech at 09:35 the same morning. Aliyev’s first task, in his own order, was “the build-up of our military power”. The budget followed in the next breath: in the state budget under discussion, the budget for next year, “military and security issues are again at the forefront, and about 9 billion manat is envisaged for them”.
The second number was the one that pays for the first. Despite the spending on the army, the borders and the rebuilding of Karabakh, he said, the state adds to its currency reserves every year, “which have already reached $90 billion, about 20 times our external debt”. The external debt, he said, stands at 5.6% of GDP.
Aliyev’s first task, in his own order, was “the build-up of our military power”.
Then the position. Many countries have joined camps or want to, he said, “we do not join any camp and will not join one, we do not need to”. Two historic events, in his account, were the declaration of comprehensive strategic partnership signed with China and the strategic charter signed with the United States: “these are the two superpowers of the world, there is no third”.
On the weapons, he said every one was bought with money, at world prices, “down to the last cartridge”.
The line on Armenia was written for the room. “There is no place for emotions in politics”, he said, and had the country given in to them, “a third Victory Arch would probably have been erected in the centre of Irevan”, his name for Yerevan. The peace treaty was not the subject of that sentence. Restraint was, and he presented it as a choice the state could afford.
The regions came with a ledger. By data given to him the day before, 96,000 people live, work and study in Karabakh and East Zangezur, and the state has allocated 28 billion manat to their development to date. The two international investment forums, he said, produced contracts worth more than $20 billion in all.
Transit got a target. This year’s transit cargo through Azerbaijan is expected to reach 16 million tonnes, and he has set a goal of 30 million tonnes in the medium term, with no year attached. Refining capacity, counting petroleum products only, he put at 30 million tonnes in three places.
The social line was an instruction without a sum: the minimum wage, pensions and social allowances will be raised next year. The amounts are for the budget to print.
Read together, the figures are the argument: the army comes first because the reserves can carry it, the reserves are 20 times the debt because the debt is 5.6% of GDP, and the camps can be refused because both superpowers are partners. Each claim rests on a number the state itself reports, and none of the numbers was new on Friday. What was new was the president saying them in one breath to his party.
Ideology closed the speech. “Ideological security is as important as physical security”, he said, because ideological subversion is aimed inward, and he called for ideological work to be restructured without clichés and formal events. The 2027 budget that carries the 9 billion is before the Milli Majlis.