Azerbaijan to increase defence budget $1b next year

Azerbaijan's Finance Minister Samir Sarifov has said that his country will increase its defence budget to 4.8bn dollars in 2015 from the current 3.8bn dollars.

According to the law on the state budget for 2014, total budget revenues in Azerbaijan this year are 23.4bn dollars and total spending is 25.5bn dollars.

"At a time when Armenia is taking no heed of norms and principles of international laws, continues its occupation policy and provocations on the contact line [between Armenian and Azerbaijani troops in the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict zone], there is no need for an extra justification for an improvement in supplies of the Azerbaijani armed forces," Sarifov was quoted as saying in parliament on 18 November.

Tensions between Baku and Yerevan, which are locked in a dispute over Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagornyy Karabakh, escalated after an Armenian helicopter gunship was shot down by Azerbaijan in its Agdam District (part of which is under the control of Armenians) in the Karabakh conflict zone on 12 November. This is the first such incident since the armed phase of the conflict ended in a cease-fire in 1994.

Azerbaijan and Armenia have been increasing their military budgets steadily for over 10 years, and official hostile rhetoric keeps in step.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly said that a military option is on the table towards the resolution of the conflict and the Azerbaijani army will be supplied with all state-of-the-art weapons necessary to reclaim its Armenian-held territories. Azerbaijan has been procuring weapons from Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Israel; and builds heavy military equipment jointly with South Africa and Turkey.

Armenia buys weapons from Russia for low prices as a member of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Russia also maintains military bases in Armenia - one at Gyumri, on Armenia's border with Turkey, and another near Yerevan.