Azerbaijan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) shrank 1.3 percent in the first quarter of 2021 from a year earlier, according to the State Statistics Committee.

Kapital Bank, the oldest and one of the top three commercial banks in Azerbaijan, reported a net profit of 55,535 million manats ($33.7 million) in the first quarter of 2021, 26 percent less compared to the same period in 2020.

Azerbaijan’s leading gold mining company, Anglo Asian Mining Plc, reported a decline in gold production to 11,907 ounces in the first quarter of 2021 from 15,867 ounces in the same period last year.

President Ilham Aliyev this week used only very thinly veiled language in saying “mediators” – which could only mean the OSCE – were not neutral but rather too often bureaucrats only interested in preserving the “status quo”.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan will officially resign sometime during the last 10 days of April, a step that is necessary to hold planned June 20 early parliamentary elections.

The price of oil could plunge to as little as $10 a barrel by 2050 if the world succeeds in electrifying the energy market and meeting the Paris Agreement goals, analysis by consultancy Wood Mackenzie shows.