“We discussed the selection of audit company for analyzing and reconciling reports of 2011 and Multi-stakeholder Group agreed on Moore Stephens” – stated MSG member Gubad Ibadoglu, when being interviewed on latest MSG meeting.  Another issue discussed at that meeting was holding International EITI conference in Azerbaijan, but no decision was made on that: “The next meeting we will return to this issue again. The meeting agenda also included discussions on the final version of MoU and its adoption; however this issue was postponed to the next meeting due to non clear position of Companies’ Group. It was agreed that the working group of MSG would meet on March 1st and present the results at the next MSG meeting. Inclusion of social payments to EITI reports was also among discusses issues. This initiative was proposed by civil society and some evaluations were already made. It was agreed that the Companies’ Group would come up with its final position before next meeting”.

The Economic Research Center (ERC) along with the Azerbaijan Agribusiness Center (AAC) completed a project explaining the situation in the aquaculture sector of Azerbaijan. The research started in April 2011 and was financed by USAID through hits Azerbaijan Competitiveness and Trade (ACT) Project. The study’s main objectives were to evaluate the competitiveness, profitability, feasibility, importance, and trends and constraints in the aquaculture sector inAzerbaijan. The project was implemented in three primary phases.The first phase included a series of workshops for the responsible staff on the Domestic Resource Cost (DRC) methodology which was the main tool used for the analysis.