Azerbaijan: imports are growing, but the EAC certificate does not apply here

The surplus, meanwhile, all but vanished.

The State Statistics Committee's nine-month release, published 13 November 2025, puts January-September turnover at $35.40 billion, with exports of $18.63 billion and imports of $16.77 billion. Two agencies count by different methods and point the same way.

An oil exporter with a shrinking surplus has to replace hydrocarbon revenue, and the state has put its weight behind non-oil industry, construction and agriculture. Those sectors buy equipment, materials and inputs from manufacturers like you.

The Eurasian Economic Union has five members, Azerbaijan is not one of them, and an EAC certificate obtained for Kazakhstan does not cover this market. Certification becomes a budget line and a stretch of calendar of its own, and you want to know that before you promise a distributor delivery dates.

The US Country Commercial Guide, updated 12 January 2026, lists what an importer files: a signed import contract carrying a contract number, a customs declaration, and permissions from the relevant state bodies, plus a bill of lading, sales invoice, packing list, certificate of origin and certificate of quality.

The distribution agreement gets finished and checked at the start here. If you are used to sending a first pallet on a handshake and settling the terms as shipments go out, this market does not work that way.

Of the country's 10.4 million people, 9.27 million are online and 7.61 million are on social platforms. Those are DataReportal's figures of 8 November 2025: internet penetration 89.0%, social 73.1%. Instagram reaches 4.25 million, Facebook 1.65 million.

For bearings: Kazakhstan runs 93.4%, Uzbekistan 89.0%, Kyrgyzstan 88.5%. Azerbaijan sits mid-range, which means the buyer who hears your name checks it that same evening and finds either your site or nothing. Telegram did not make the report; it releases no figures.

The contract that gets registered at customs, and the correspondence around it, ran in Russian for us, so the Kazakh document pack works here too. Azerbaijani starts where the product meets the end buyer: packaging, instructions, the shelf.

Baku stacks its exhibitions into weeks instead of spreading them across the year. Iteca Caspian has run the country's exhibition calendar since 2000 and holds Caspian Construction Week, in 2026 on 14-16 October: six shows in parallel, among them construction, HVAC and water supply, plastics and polymers, and road infrastructure.

For a manufacturer that saves money: one week in Baku puts the buyers of several adjacent categories in the same hall. The organiser publishes the exhibitor list ahead of each show, and that list doubles as a register of who is already active in the category.

Work on Azerbaijan starts with one question: is your category already served, and by whom. Then the list of companies bringing it in today, and correspondence with whoever signs off on purchasing. That runs in the monthly format, from $10,000 a month, or in the distributor search for a fee and a percentage: $2,200 plus a percentage of orders in month one, then the percentage only.

An EAC certificate obtained for Kazakhstan works in three of the seven markets: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia.