Page 4 - FSUOGM Week 35 2022

FSUOGM COMMENTARY FSUOGM

Turkmenistan: The

price isn’t right

Turkmenistan is scrapping the subsidies for energy that it introduced in the early 1990s.

TURKMENISTAN ANOTHER major plank of Turkmenistan’s Berdimuhamedov, argued: “Incomes are
social protection policy is on the cusp of increasing from year to year, there are a large
WHAT: disappearing. number of jobs. I accordingly support and con-
Ashgabatt is preparing to At a Cabinet meeting on August 26, much sider appropriate the proposal of the Council of
slash subsidies for staple attention was focused on the longstanding ambi- Elders to phase in payment for the provision of
goods, including energy. tion to “progressively introduce market mecha- utilities, so as to ensure a more rational and care-
nisms,” as state media puts it. ful use of natural resources.”
WHY: Vienna-based Chronicles of Turkmenistan The scrapping of the requirement to pay for
Those subsidies have spells out the implications of what the govern- those utilities was implemented in 1993 by the
been in place since the ment has planned in balder terms: shoppers at late president Saparmurat Niyazov. The arrange-
early 1990s, but the state stores will probably no longer be guaran- ment was supposed to remain in place until 2030.
budget is not what it once teed fixed and subsidised prices for staple goods. Similar reasoning to that voiced by Gur-
was. The broader marketisation agenda has been banguly Berdimuhamedov will be heard as the
taking shape since 2017. It was in October of government pushes forward with the definitive
WHAT NEXT: that year that the Council of Elders, a for-show dismantling of the cheap bread-for-stability
There has been progress assembly of national and local dignitaries rou- social contract.
in Russian-Turkmen gas tinely assembled to give a sheen of legitimacy to There is another contract that Turkmenistan
talks, but why Moscow unpopular decisions, voted to scrap the free pro- appears enthusiastic to revise – namely, the one it
needs more supply right vision of electricity, natural gas, water and salt to has with Russia’s gas monopoly Gazprom.
now is unclear. the population. Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller was in
As the then-president, Gurbanguly Ashgabat on August 29 for talks with President

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