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While Azerbaijan grows rich from energy extracted from beneath the land and sea, quacks and charlatans in the Caspian Basin nation are making hay, Shahin Abbasov writes on EurasiaNet.

The author notes that in a national survey conducted earlier this year by the Baku-based Center for Economic and Social Development roughly a quarter of the 500 respondents said that they had visited a psychic, shaman, fortuneteller or astrologer in 2012.

Based on respondents’ information, the Center estimated that a whopping 160 million manats, or about $203 million, had been spent on such services. “It is three times more than annual government budget spending on maintenance of the presidential administration or four times more than spending on the judiciary system,” claimed the Center’s director, economist Vugar Bayramov.

According to him, throughout the South Caucasus, as well as in nearby Russia, Iran and Turkey, fortunetelling long has prospered, no matter what the government’s attitude or religious restrictions. But increased income levels over the past decade in Azerbaijan seem to have provided a big boost to such practices

Bayramov believes that lots of social-welfare problems make people lack confidence about the future, low trust in the state-run healthcare system, for instance, prompts more people to ask various healers for recovery from their medical problems, other widespread problems are unemployment, low levels of education.

A single visit to an ordinary Azerbaijani psychic could range anywhere from 50 to 1,000 manats ( about $64 to $1,275). One Baku weekly paper features a special section for fortunetelling ads; a notice from a “black magician” promises -- for women only -- love charms and “vengeance on enemies,” plus protection from “the evil eye, hexes, sorcery and other things,” the author writes.

Most clients, one of the fortune tellers says, are, indeed, women, between the ages of 18 and 32 who come seeking love, marriage. “While rumor has it that senior members of the Azerbaijani government and their family members also make regular use of fortunetellers, the reports cannot be substantiated,” the article reads.