Over the past two years, Kyrgyzstan has improved its position in the rating of the authoritative Forbes magazine in its attractiveness for business, having moved from the 123rd place to the 108th, Trend reports referring to kabar.kg.
In the Doing Business ranking, the republic moved from the 77th place to 70th within a year. In addition, as previously reported by the Minister of Economy of the Kyrgyz Republic Oleg Pankratov, according to the World Bank report, Kyrgyzstan managed to improve its positions in regard to certain indicators such as Resolving Insolvency – 82nd place (+37), International Trade – 70th place (+14), Protecting Minority Investors – 38th place (+13) and Enforcing Contracts – 131th place (+8). All this together allowed to achieve a positive trend in the assessment of the country by international experts.
Improvement of Kyrgyzstan’s position in the aforementioned ratings attracted the attention of Ritm Eurasia (Russian: Ритм Евразии) information and analytical website.
Based on the data of the National Statistics Committee of the Kyrgyz Republic, the experts made the following forecasts.
For the period from January to October 2018, the flow of investments into the country has sharply decreased – by 31%. Unfortunately, this state institution does not provide an analysis of the reasons for such a sharp drop in interest in the economy of the republic among foreign investors. The Forbes magazine placed Kyrgyzstan in its ranking at the 108th place in business attractiveness. According to the Forbes, the country has sought to attract foreign investment to expand the export base, including the construction of hydroelectric power plants. But the difficult investment climate and the ongoing legal struggle with a Canadian firm (Centerra Gold is engaged in developing a large gold deposit – editor’s note) for the joint ownership structure of the country's largest gold mine restrain potential investors.
It is also mentioned that in December in Bishkek, the US Department of State delegation met with representatives of the government of the republic. A few days later, President Sooronbay Jeenbekov announced that a new bilateral agreement with the United States on cooperation would be signed. Officials of various ranks talked about American investment. Should we expect major investments in the economy of Kyrgyzstan from the American business?
For the answer to this question, the author turned to economic expert Kubat Rakhimov, who questioned the possibility of a large flow of American investment in Kyrgyzstan.
“We are a too small country for the large American business to come to us. It can be expected that there will be investments in such industries as education. But big business, especially industrial, is unlikely to show interest,” he explained.
Political analyst Igor Shestakov shared the opinion that in order to improve the investment climate, it is necessary for the Government of Kyrgyzstan to develop a special package of documents for investors.
“But there is still no such package. In theory, it would be well to make a presentation of such a package, to organize a forum at the highest level inviting potential investors. But so far the government has not announced such an initiative or a similar one,” the political analyst added.
But in July 2018, the Investment Promotion and Protection Agency of Kyrgyzstan announced that special investment lots would be prepared to assist foreign businessmen, which would be formed with the participation of the heads of local governments, according to their own development projects for their region, and would include permits, ranging from land status transformation to utilities.
In addition, the government’s working group will also create an investment map that will help businessmen determine which business is best done in each of the country's regions. A large-scale presentation of the abovementioned projects has not been done yet, and they are still at the finalization stage.