Finance
Azerbaijan's Current Account Surplus Doubles to $4.7B in H1
September 16, 2026
4
Min
Azerbaijan's current account surplus reached $4.7 billion in the first half of 2026, equal to 12.4% of GDP and roughly double the $2.3 billion recorded a year earlier, the Central Bank of Azerbaijan said at a briefing on its balance of payments data on 15 September, reported by Trend. Strategic foreign currency reserves rose to $85.8 billion.
Samir Nasirov, director of the CBA's statistics department, said the bank's July forecast puts the full-year surplus at $6.1 billion in 2026 and $5.2 billion in 2027, and that the projection will be revised at the next monetary policy communication, according to Trend.
An oil-price story, with a twist
The surplus is almost entirely a hydrocarbons story. The oil and gas current account surplus rose 23.6% to $9 billion, while the non-oil economy ran a $4.3 billion deficit. The average realised price of Azerbaijani oil in the half was $94.5 a barrel, 33% higher than a year earlier. Commodity exports grew 16.9% to $14.3 billion, of which $12.3 billion was oil and gas and $2 billion non-oil, against imports of $8.1 billion, leaving a goods surplus of $6.2 billion.
The twist is that high prices also raise what leaves. Profit repatriation by foreign investors was about $2 billion in the half, of which $1.8 billion went to oil and gas consortia. The CBA's own framing is that energy prices work a reciprocal mechanism: they lift the surplus and the outflow of earnings at the same time.
Azerbaijan is now a net exporter of capital
The more structurally interesting number is on the financial account. Azerbaijani entities directed $5 billion of direct investment abroad in the half, 3.7 times the year-earlier figure, while $3.6-3.7 billion came in. The oil and gas sector accounted for $4.2 billion of the outflow, and most of that was a single deal: the May acquisition of a 99.85% stake in Italiana Petroli, valued at about 3 billion euros ($3.2-3.3 billion), per Trend.
Inward FDI rose 13.8% to $3.667 billion. Of that, $2.8 billion went to oil and gas and $877 million to non-oil, non-energy sectors; the CBA's estimate of FDI into the non-oil sector as a whole rose 19.6% to $0.9 billion, including $0.3 billion of reinvested earnings, according to the CBA report cited by Trend. The oil and gas sector still accounted for 76.1% of inward FDI. Renewable energy projects are counted within the non-oil figure.
Net foreign financial assets increased by $3.3 billion, driven by the outward FDI, while external liabilities linked to portfolio investment fell by about $2 billion.
Where the money came from
Two smaller investors stood out. Direct investment from Russia rose 82.8% to $237.1 million on a gross basis ($129.7 million net of reverse flows), while Azerbaijani investment into Russia fell 20.5% to $22.5 million, Trend reported from CBA data. US direct investment totalled $131.6 million, up 47%, according to a separate Trend report.
Services remained in deficit overall, mainly because the oil sector imports construction and professional services. But transport services posted a surplus of $941 million, up about 10%, which Nasirov attributed primarily to tariff revenue from the Southern Gas Corridor and Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan rather than to the Middle Corridor. Tourism services kept a $47 million surplus despite a slight fall in visitor numbers.
The caveats
A surplus of 12.4% of GDP built on a $94.5 barrel is not a structural improvement; the non-oil deficit of $4.3 billion is the number that describes the underlying economy. The CBA itself expects the surplus to narrow next year. And the Italiana Petroli purchase, which flatters the outward-investment line, is a one-off: strip it out and the outflow is closer to $1.7-1.8 billion. Read together, the data say Azerbaijan is cash-rich and increasingly willing to deploy that cash abroad, and still dependent on the price that makes it possible.
