The Asian market is of particular interest to Azerbaijan and is considered promising for expansion of local production, Azerbaijani Minister of Communications and Information Technologies Ali Abbasov said at an Azerbaijani-Japanese seminar on information technologies.

Abbasov said the Asian market is large and technologically advanced and not as limited as the European one. Azerbaijan is interested in the expansion of local companies to the Asian market and in particular Japan.

As the minister said, this year Azerbaijan launched its first communications satellite. The launch of the second telecommunications satellite is scheduled for 2016 and the launch of the low orbit satellite for 2014.

He said Azerbaijan will begin processing the information received from the satellites of other countries via a ground satellite station this autumn.

Abbasov noted that today about 80 per cent of Azerbaijan's exports account for the oil sector, but it is planned to significantly increase the export of non-oil products by 2020.

"A two-fold increase is expected in the GDP this year thanks to the development of the ICT sector," he said.