Kyrgyz Republic Country Economic Memorandum

Izvorski, Ivailo ; Mbowe, Appolenia ; Dubashov, Bakyt ; Gassner, Katharina ; Ferrantino, Michael J. ; Islam, Roumeen ; Sahovic, Tarik

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ECONOMIC GROWTH;    MACROECONOMIC POLICY;    PRIVATE SECTOR DEVELOPMENT;    TRADE POLICY;    ENERGY POLICY;   

RP-ID  :  147112

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The Kyrgyz Republic has experiencedmodest and volatile economic expansion since the economybottomed out from the transition recession in 1995, when GDPamounted to about half of its pre-independence levels. As aresult of structural reforms at the start of transition, theemergence of remittances and commodity exports, largelygold, as powerful new drivers of growth, and improvements inthe macroeconomic management in the recent decade,per-capita real GDP grew by 3.1 percent a year on averagesince 1995. The Kyrgyz Republic is now a lower middle-incomeeconomy, as it was in 1990. Economic expansion hasbenefitted from fixed investment that has risen to 31percent of GDP, one of the highest in Europe and CentralAsia and well-above the threshold of 25 percent reached bythe group of successful countries studied by the GrowthCommission in 2007. Lower fiscal deficits and low inflationindicate the success of recent macroeconomic policies. Theseachievements notwithstanding, Kyrgyz Republic’s growth andproductivity performance has lagged most relevantcomparators, frustrating the needs of the poor and theyoung. As a result, while per-capita GDP in constant priceshas doubled since 1995, it has still not caught up withpre-independence levels. Per-capita incomes in the KyrgyzRepublic have increased by 20 percent less than the averageof lower middle-income countries since 2000 and 40 percentless than the average for the Caucasus and Central Asia.Productivity increases – proxied by changes in total factorproductivity, have averaged half a percent since 2000,leaving largely factor accumulation as the driver ofeconomic growth. And while ‘Productivity isn’t everything,but in the long run it is almost everything’, highlightingone of the main challenges of the country’s current growthmodel.3 Poverty has declined, but modest growth has made amodest dent, leaving the poverty rate as high as 31 percent,with a substantial part of the population living in regionswith more limited and lower quality government services thanin Bishkek.