74.3% of these legal entities established small enterprises and over 4,000 foreign investment-based companies were registered in the country, APA reports.

The number of individual bodies engaged in entrepreneurship climbed 13.5%, year-over-year, to 237,000.

Babayev also underscored great achievements in improvement of investment climate and attraction of investment influx into the non-oil sector during 2006, saying capital investments jumped 14.8%.

A total of $36.7bn were invested in the economy during the period of 1995-2006, of which $25.7bn (more than 70%) were foreign investments.

The minister insisted that real economic growth will surpass the forecasted 29.7% in 2007.