JUNE 21 2017 (The Bulletin) — Turkmenistan’s economy is stalling and its prospects looking increasingly bad, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported in a podcast.
Pulling accurate information from Turkmenistan is complicated with most analysts describing GDP growth data permanently showing a 6% expansion as both unrealistic and misleading. Instead they are increasingly following revenue export data which measured $5b last year against $9b in 2014. This gives a rough indication of how much money the Turkmen government, driver of the economy, has to spend.
Energy prices collapsed in 2014, hitting the Turkmen economy particularly hard as it is reliant on gas sales to China.
The US-funded RFE/RL said that the an informal barter economy had grown as cash was in such short supply.
“I would call this a great Turkmen Depression,” said Farrukh Yussupov, head of the RFE/RL Turkmen service. “People are not getting paid for months and at the bazaars not only do you see fewer buyers but today we are reporting that there are no sellers either.”
RFE/RL also said that President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov had ordered regional governments to meet their own expenses as central government couldn’t afford to prop them up.
The official rate of the Turkmen manat is 3.5/$1 but sources on the RFE/RL report in Ashgabat said that on the Black Market the manat is trading at around 7/$1.
Earlier this year, Mr Berdymukhamedov ordered his government to cut generous Soviet- era subsidies as a way of saving money, a certain sign that the economy was in trouble.
ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 334, published on June 26 2017)
