BERDIMUHAMEDOV PLANS TO TURN TURKMENISTAN INTO AN INDUSTRIAL NATION
On October 23, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov announced a so-called presidential plan including a five year economic plan for 2012-2016 and vowed to invest 200 billion manats (US$ 70 billion) into the state and private sectors of the economy to turn Turkmenistan into an industrial state. The plan also aims to bring new reforms in the country’s educational, agricultural and energy sectors. Berdimuhamedov unveiled the presidential plan at an annual meeting of the Council of Elders, an advisory body that meets annually and has no legal authority except for lavishing the president’s new policy initiatives and decisions with praise.
First, the new economic plan aims to build and reconstruct over 450 industrial facilities and support systems across the country within the next five years. The president emphasized the modernization of existing industrial plants to produce finished and value added products by processing the country’s hydrocarbon resources. For example, building a gas-chemical complex within 4-5 years will allow Turkmenistan to establish a sizeable production of polyethylene and polypropylene, according to Berdimuhamedov. The president also directed his Cabinet members to start a pilot project in each province by attaching these upcoming industrial facilities to bigger districts and moving or concentrating the populations of scattered mini-districts and villages closer to these industrial centers. On one hand, the president’s economic plan is highly ambitious for a short period of time. On the other, it is unclear how the plan will be implemented in the near term, given the lack of existing infrastructure especially in the provinces.
Developing the country’s petrochemical industry to produce finished products and reduce the economy’s dependency on raw fuel resources is a prioritized aspect of the economic plan. The building of new industrial facilities will allow for the production and export of products such as caustic soda, chlorine and its derivatives, potassium fertilizers, high grade glass and insulation composite materials of basalt fibers. “The geopolitical situation and fall of oil prices in the world have a negative impact on the export of natural gas via pipelines” said Berdimuhamedov. He stated that Turkmenistan should therefore move away from its resource dependency toward a more diversified economy.
The second aspect of Berdimuhamedov’s presidential plan is to reform the educational sector. In particular, the president instructed the Cabinet of Ministers to consider switching the secondary education system from ten to twelve years and to create contract-based educational establishments to provide paid education. Currently, nearly all universities and institutions in Turkmenistan, except for the Turkmen-Turkish University, are run on government subsidies and do not provide paid education. The plan states that creating possibilities for paid education will provide chances for the older generation to obtain education and professional development. The president told the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Finance, and the Central Bank of Turkmenistan to make necessary preparations to deliver paid education starting from the 2013-14 academic year. Critics maintain that such reforms will not be enough to provide a sufficient number of university admissions to alleviate the country’s brain drain; neither will they address the widespread corruption in the admissions process. Currently, between 80,000-90,000 students graduate from secondary schools nationwide and only roughly 5,000 are admitted to higher education due to the limited number of universities in the country.
A third component of the reform addresses agriculture. The president spoke about introducing new technologies in the country’s irrigation system and expanding the water-carrying capacity of some of the existing rivers and reservoirs in Turkmenistan. The completion of irrigation projects such as the continued construction of the man-made lake “Altyn Asyr” and the expansion of the Karakum River, which is derived from the Amu Darya River at the border with Uzbekistan, are expected to provide agricultural growth in the country. However, it is uncertain how Berdimuhamedov’s Uzbek counterpart Karimov will react to these initiatives given his adamant opposition to the construction of hydropower stations in upstream countries like Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Domestically, the presidential plan has been promulgated as ushering into what the president himself heralded as the “Epoch of Happiness and Might” in Turkmenistan. However, local and foreign skeptics claim that it will take decades, if not more, to implement such a grandiose and costly economic plan.
