On November 30, in an interview to CentralAsia.news, an observer of the economy of Turkmenistan Valentin Trapeznikov said that in 2021 Turkmenistan reached success in the socio-economic sphere. He analyzed the most significant events in the relative direction.
Growth of macroeconomic indicators
In 2021, there was registered dynamic development of the economy of Turkmenistan, as well as structural changes in the gross domestic product (GDP) in favor of the real sector of the economy — an increase in the share of commodity-producing industries.
First of all, this is reflected in the growth of the main macroeconomic indicators. So, if in January-March this year the GDP growth rate was 5,9%, in the third quarter it increased to 6,2%.
At the same time, the growth rate of gross value added in industry amounted to 8,6% in the third quarter of 2021 versus 5,5% in the first quarter.
Industry dynamics
For comparison, the same indicator in agriculture for the same period increased from 3,1% to 4,0%. In the construction industry, this indicator remained unchanged.
And in other sectors of the economy, there was even a decrease in growth rates: in trade from 10,5% to 9,0%, transport and communications — from 4,7% to 4,5%, in other services — from 6,2% to 5,9%.
There have also been certain changes in the structure of GDP. Thus, compared to the first quarter, the share of the industrial sector in the structure of this main macroeconomic indicator increased from 25,5% to 27,7%. The share of agriculture also increased from 6,6% to 12,8%.
At the same time, the share of other sectors of the economy in GDP decreased: construction — from 8,3% to 7,9%, transport and communications — from 12,3% to 10,5%, trade and other services — from 23,2% and 24,1% to 20,1% and 21,0%, respectively. In this case, the changes are related to restrictive measures within the fight against COVID-19 pandemic, which has affected most of the countries of the world.
The same reasons were the determining factors that negatively influenced the dynamics of foreign trade of Turkmenistan in the first quarter of 2021, when foreign trade turnover, exports and imports were 13-14% lower than in the previous year.
Timely measures
Later, thanks to the measures developed under the instructions of the President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov on customs, epidemiological and transport regulation of foreign trade operations, the situation started to gradually improve. At the end of the second quarter, foreign trade indicators stabilized and already exceeded the level of 2020.
And in the third quarter, foreign trade turnover exceeded 10.5 billion dollars, exports amounted to about 6.2 billion dollars, and imports — more than 4.3 billion dollars. This is 14,6%, 23,0% and 4,4%, respectively, higher than in the previous year. The foreign trade surplus is almost 1.9 billion dollars.
Thus, the economy of Turkmenistan has demonstrated a high resistance to negative external influences, the ability to structural transformation based on the effective use of the basic sectors of the real sector and foreign economic cooperation.
