Energy, Wealth and Governance in the Caucasus and Central Asia: Lessons Not Learned by Richard Auty & Indra de Soysa

Author:Richard Auty & Indra de Soysa [Auty, Richard & Soysa, Indra de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General, American Government, Social Science, Ethnic Studies
ISBN: 9780415372060
Google: hDSLmAEACAAJ
Goodreads: 3339606
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2000-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

All roads to Brussels? Changes in the geographical composition of trade

Already in Soviet times, the countries of Central Asia served to a large extent as a raw material depot for the industries of other Soviet republics (see Chapter 3), although communist industrial policy had led to the establishment of some local processing facilities and other manufacturing industries, particularly in Kazakhstan. Since the start of transition, the – clearly excessive – degree of concentration on trade within the former Soviet republics has greatly diminished. At the same time, the dependence on commodity exports has further increased, as new mineral deposits have been developed and many of the older industries proved unable to withstand market forces.

Figure 9.1 summarizes the changes in the geographical trade patterns for the five countries of Central Asia between 1995 and 2001. The figure shows that on average exports within the region have declined from around 13 per cent of total exports in 1995 to 6 per cent in 2001. This decrease is partially explained by the increase in exports of natural resources, which tend to be shipped outside the region. Nonetheless, even in value terms (US$) exports to the region declined between 1995 and 2001, although the decline was concentrated in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. If we add Russia and the remainder of the CIS, exports to former Soviet republics declined from over half of the total in 1995 to around one quarter in 2001. Interestingly, the main shift has not been to Europe (which was already the largest export destination in 1995), but rather to other market economies (including the USA, East Asia, and trade entrepots such as the Caribbean) and to regional non-CIS neighbors, such as China, Iran and Turkey. Figure 9.1 also reveals a broadly similar but much less accentuated pattern for imports from Central Asia.

It is instructive to look at these trends at the country level. Table 9.1 shows the geographical composition of trade by country. The differences are very striking. In Kazakhstan, exports to other Central Asian countries accounted for just 3 per cent of the total in 2001 (down from 6 per cent in 1995), while in the Kyrgyz Republic this figure was as high as 30 per cent (down from 47 per cent in 1995). Similarly, Kazakhstan receives only around 3 per cent of its imports from other Central Asian countries, while Tajikistan receives close to half of all imports from the region. Uzbekistan takes a middle position, while Turkmenistan does not appear to be highly integrated with the rest of Central Asia. The asymmetry in dependence on regional trade creates a problem for discussions on regional cooperation, because incentives to cooperate are clearly unequal.4

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