Azerbaijan spends nearly 2 bln dollars in 2018 to improve defense capacity: PM

BAKU, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Azerbaijan's prime minister said Friday that the country spent 3.3 billion manats (1.94 billion U.S. dollars) to improve its Defense capacity last year, according to the state-run news agency AZERTAC.

"Our Defense spending saw a growth of 526.8 million manats (309 million dollars) in 2018," Novruz Mammadov said when he submitted the government's annual report to the parliament.

The government continued purposeful measures to improve the country's military potential, upgrade army building and provide the armed forces with advanced weaponry and hardware, Mammadov was quoted as saying.

The prime minister also said Azerbaijan manufactured 1,200 types of Defense products in 2018 with a total worth of 250 million manats (147 million dollars).