Kyrgyzstan’s GDP growth exceeds estimate

27 January 2020 18:08 (UTC+04:00)

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By Abdul Kerimkhanov

Kyrgyzstan’d GDP increased by 4.5 percent in January-December 2019 against the forecast of 4.0 percent, according to the information provided by the government’s press sevice.

The GDP growth is provided by all sectors of the economy: the growth is observed in the construction industry - 10.6 percent, in agriculture - 2.6 percent, in services - 2.9 percent, in industry - 6.9 percent.

The nominal GDP volume made 590 million soms ($8.45 million).

These are preliminary data, which, as a rule, tend to increase when adjusted.

The volume of industrial production amounted to more than 278.6 billion soms (about $4 billion), having increased by over 21 million soms ($300,921), compared to 2018.

This growth was achieved due to the growth of industrial production of metal ores, basic metals, construction materials, clothing, extraction of crude oil, natural gas and coal, as well as food production.

The foreign trade turnover for January-December 2019 amounted to $6.2 billion, while imports decreased by 6.6 percent. One of the factors of the decrease is decline in re-exports of goods.

In particular, imports of clothing and apparel decreased by 1.8 times, while exports decreased by 1.5 times. At the same time, clothing production increased by more than 18 percent, which indicates a significant reduction in re-exports of these goods, as well as some import substitution of these goods in the country.

In the industrial sector there is also a significant import substitution in other goods such as textiles, leather goods and cement.

At the above-mentioned time span, export volumes increased by 9.4 percent. This growth is due to higher export volumes of gold, ores and concentrates of precious metals, cement, ceramic products, fertilizers, fruits and nuts, vegetables and root vegetables, meat and meat co-products.

In connection with the above, the trade deficit decreased by $465 million. This is a positive figure.

The inflow of remittances amounted to almost $2.2 billion and decreased by $287 million (or 11.6 percent) compared to the same period of 2018. This is mainly due to the introduction of a limit on remittances in Russia in April 2019.

The January-September results showed that the inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) amounted to $576.8 million, and increased by more than 67 percent compared to the same time span of 2018. Such significant growth was mainly achieved due to the increase in inflow of direct foreign investments in the sphere for professional, scientific and technical activities (geological exploration) by 3.3 times, as well as in manufacturing industry by 2.3 times and other sectors.

The inflow exceeded the outflow level by $63.3 million (by $16.8 million in January-September 2018).

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Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94