Kyrgyzstan

SITUATED IN CENTRAL Asia and bordering China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan has a population of about 5.5 million and a territory nearly the size of South Dakota. Kyrgyzstan was part of the former Soviet Union and gained its independence in 1991. Its estimated real annual per capita income of $379 in 2003 makes it the third poorest former Soviet republic after Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, according to the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU).

Agriculture constitutes 35 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and, alongside services (which account for another 40 percent of GDP), remains a bedrock of the economy. Kyrgyzstan also has [Page 620]substantial amounts of gold and antimony, with mining of these compounds taking place in remote mountain areas, according to the EIU.

The economy plummeted by 50 percent in the first four years after independence, until growth began again in 1996, driven mainly by agriculture and, to a degree, the development of the Kumtor gold mine, which by itself accounts for about seven percent of GDP. As much as a 25 percent decrease has been achieved since 1998 in the number of people living below the poverty line (considered to be $42 per month).

Nonmonetary indicators of well-being have also become manifest. Infant mortality, considered one of the key integrated poverty and human development indicators, declined by 1.4 percent in 2003 and amounted to less than 20 percent in 2004, by International Monetary Fund (IMF) measurements. Despite some hopeful signs, about half of the population, or 500,000 families, still lives below poverty. According to the IMF, the majority (70 percent) of the poor live in rural areas. Workers in the healthcare and agricultural sectors earn only half the national average.

Regional income disparities also exist mainly between the primarily agricultural south and the more industrialized north, as measured by the EIU. The IMF estimates that its policies will have reduced poverty from a high of 55 percent to 39 percent in 2005. Many people rely on alternate modes of income generation, aside from their official jobs. As such, the extra income via trade, generated by some teachers and doctors for example, may not necessarily be reflected in official statistics.

Attitudes on the transition from communism is strongly correlated to one's socioeconomic status (SES): a 2001 poll found that those categorized with high SES in Kyrgyzstan are more likely to mention the positive impacts (76 percent) of transition on their lives and those with low SES are more likely to mention negative impacts (72 percent). On the whole, two-thirds of those surveyed felt that their economic situation was either somewhat bad or very bad, with 64 percent of the population being dissatisfied with the overall conditions in the country, economic difficulties being the most often-cited reason for their dissatisfaction.

The higher the perceived financial status of individuals polled, the more positive was their attitude about the economy and the faster the pace desired toward a market economy. Ethnic Russian citizens of Kyrgyzstan were more pessimistic about the economic situation than ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbek citizens, according to IFES (an agency promoting democracy) in 2002.

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