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Economic Growth

Kyrgyzstan Economic Growth: Government Targets 8% Annually

Kyrgyzstan has set a target of average annual real GDP growth of at least 8% and a 20% annual increase in foreign direct investment inflows through the end of 2030. Bishkek aims to achieve these goals by developing export-oriented industries, expanding transport routes, and attracting international capital. While recent international forecasts suggest growth could exceed 8% this year, sustaining that pace through 2030 remains a challenge. The government outlined the priorities at a meeting in Bishkek on October 21. Its plans include expanding production of export goods, modernizing trade and customs procedures, strengthening private property protections, and improving businesses' access to long-term financing. Positive Momentum Set to Continue The targets are set out in the National Development Program through 2030, adopted in June 2025. The program calls for nominal GDP to reach at least $30 billion and GDP per capita to rise to $4,500. International forecasts suggest Kyrgyzstan's economy will maintain strong growth in the near term, although a slowdown is expected. Following 11.1% growth in 2025, the IMF forecasts 9% growth in 2026 and 7% in 2027, while the World Bank projects 9.6% growth this year. However, both institutions have highlighted risks to the country's economic momentum, including a potential slowdown in re-export trade, weaker growth in Russia and China, rising energy prices, and tighter sanctions restrictions. To maintain rapid growth, Bishkek intends to support food processing, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, light manufacturing, machinery production, and mineral processing. The goal is to increase exports of domestically produced goods. Infrastructure-led Growth One of the country's largest infrastructure projects remains the China–Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan railway. Construction began in December 2024, with completion scheduled for 2030. The project is estimated to cost $4.7 billion, including $2.3 billion in loans from Chinese banks. China holds a 51% stake in the joint project company, while Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan each own 24.5%. The railway is expected to give Kyrgyzstan its first direct rail link to China and provide Uzbekistan with an alternative route to the Chinese market. For Bishkek, it offers an opportunity to generate transit revenue and develop logistics centers. However, the route's commercial viability will depend on freight volumes, tariffs, and the efficiency of border crossings. Another major project is the Kambarata-1 hydropower plant, which Kyrgyzstan is advancing jointly with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Additional electricity generation capacity is needed, among other purposes, to support industrial expansion. On October 14, Kyrgyzstan's ambassador to Switzerland presented both projects to potential investors in Geneva. Bishkek also plans to encourage state-owned companies to issue Eurobonds, expand long-term financing through state banks, and develop the Tamchy special financial and investment zone to attract international capital. Logistics, information technology, tourism, and financial services have been identified as promising sectors. Risks At the same time, Kyrgyzstan's close economic ties with Russia create additional risks for its banking sector and foreign trade. The IMF has warned that exposure to international sanctions and weaknesses in financial oversight could disrupt banking relationships and cross-border trade. A further challenge is ensuring that major infrastructure projects benefit the wider...

Rare Earth Metals

Kazakhstan Opens $15 Million Rare Metals Research Center with South Korea

Kazakhstan is seeking to turn more of its mineral wealth into high-value materials for electric vehicles, electronics, and other advanced industries with the opening of a Korean-backed rare-metals research center in Almaty. The center, which opened on October 21, is supported by a five-year funding program worth approximately $15 million. Based at the Institute of Metallurgy and Ore Beneficiation at Satbayev University, the center will develop technologies for processing and refining rare metals. The project is being developed under South Korea's official development assistance program, with the participation of the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH) and the Korea National Institute of Rare Metals (KORAM). South Korea has outlined a five-year funding plan worth 19.8 billion won (approximately $15 million) for the Almaty center between 2026 and 2030, including 2 billion won ($1.5 million) for 2026. Kazakhstan has substantial mineral resources, but extracting metals and producing finished materials require different technologies. The most challenging stages involve separating individual elements, purifying them, and producing materials suitable for industrial use. These are the processes the new center will focus on. The research is expected to be tested in cooperation with Kazakh mining and metallurgical companies. According to Satbayev University Rector Meiram Begentayev, research priorities should be determined by the needs of industry. “We expect our industrial partners to take an active role in the center's work. Their specific production challenges will help identify priority areas for research, while joint testing will allow us to prepare scientific developments for implementation in industrial production,” Begentayev said. At the steering committee's first meeting, participants discussed laboratory equipment, specialist training, and cooperation with industrial enterprises. The Almaty center was established as Kazakhstan seeks to develop its own capacity to process critical minerals. The country is holding talks with foreign partners interested in raw materials for batteries, electronics, and energy equipment. The Times of Central Asia previously reported on plans for the Almaty center in July. Kazakhstan has also proposed cooperation with Belgium on rare-earth metals processing. Authorities also plan to establish an internationally accredited laboratory in Astana to analyze mineral samples.

Start-ups

Maksim Stepanenko’s Path from Kyrgyzstan to Silicon Valley

Maksim Stepanenko’s career has taken him from Aydarken in southern Kyrgyzstan to Silicon Valley. After co-founding Operator, an artificial intelligence startup acquired by OpenAI, he chose to step away rather than join the buyer. Stepanenko told The Times of Central Asia that he is now taking time off and working on new projects. From Aydarken to MIT Stepanenko was born in Aydarken, in Kyrgyzstan’s Batken region. Before entering university, he represented the country at the International Physics Olympiad. He received an honorable mention in Singapore in 2006, a silver medal in Iran in 2007, and a bronze in Vietnam in 2008. His route to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was not immediate. After his first application was unsuccessful, he spent almost a year studying in Germany before entering MIT in 2009 to study computer science. While there, he worked as an undergraduate research assistant at the MIT Media Lab. Early Engineering Roles Stepanenko graduated in 2012. His early experience included two summer internships at Google and a role as one of the first software engineers at Locu, a startup founded by MIT graduates. Locu helped local businesses manage their online listings. A business could update its information once and distribute the changes across services including Yelp and Facebook. GoDaddy acquired the company in August 2013 for a reported $70 million. In 2014, Stepanenko joined cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase as employee number 21. Over five years, his work included Coinbase Commerce and the USDC stablecoin, as well as Coinbase Ventures. “I graduated in 2012 and moved to [San Francisco] to work here, at a different startup. Around 2013-2014, I started spending more and more time on crypto – Bitcoin Talk was the popular forum at the time. I was finding it more and more interesting. And then, at some point, I decided I wanted to explore working full-time in this space. At that time, there wasn't really any legitimate company in the space. Coinbase was the only company that was already relatively well known, at least here in Silicon Valley. So, I ended up joining Coinbase,” Stepanenko previously told Compound. Co-Founding Primer In 2019, On Deck’s Erik Torenberg introduced Stepanenko to Ryan Delk. The two co-founded Primer, an education startup offering online learning activities and, later, small in-person schools. [caption id="attachment_59010" align="aligncenter" width="1774"] Ryan Delk (left) and Maksim Stepanenko (right)[/caption] Primer initially focused on homeschooling. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it developed online clubs where children could pursue shared interests and work together on projects. The company later allowed children to create and run their own clubs. It then developed microschools, combining small groups of students with in-person instruction and digital learning tools. The company’s history records expansion to Alabama in 2025 and Texas in 2026. Primer raised a $3.7 million seed round in 2020, led by Founders Fund. In April 2022, it announced a further $15 million round, led by Founders Fund and co-led by Khosla Ventures. Stepanenko left Primer in November 2022. “I decided to step away from the company after...

Migration

Russia Expels 32 Uzbek Migrants as Deportations Rise in Novosibirsk

Russian authorities expelled 32 Uzbek citizens from the Novosibirsk region on October 16 for violating migration regulations. Court bailiffs escorted a reported total of 47 foreign nationals out of the country that day, including citizens of Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Azerbaijan. Over the course of the week, 91 people were expelled from the region. The migrants were identified during police raids in two districts of Novosibirsk and the surrounding Novosibirsky district. Those expelled paid for their own tickets home. Violations of Russia's entry and residence regulations can result in fines ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 rubles (approximately $25–62), as well as administrative expulsion. Under Russian law, expulsion generally also means a five-year ban on re-entering the country. Expulsions from the region have risen sharply. By mid-September 2026, authorities had expelled 1,524 foreign nationals from the Novosibirsk region, compared with 958 during the same period a year earlier, an increase of approximately 59%. Uzbek citizens account for a substantial share of those expelled. By July, authorities had removed 618 Uzbeks out of a total of 1,314 foreign nationals, or approximately 47%. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan were the next most frequently represented countries. The increase in expulsions comes as fewer foreign workers are obtaining work permits in the region. According to figures presented to regional lawmakers, approximately 27,000 work patents were issued in the first eight months of 2026, down from 34,000 during the same period last year. Russia is also tightening national requirements for migrant workers and their families. In July, Russia enacted legislation requiring migrant workers to demonstrate that they can financially support themselves and dependent family members. The changes also require children covered by the provisions who turn 18 to obtain their own work patent or another legal basis to remain in Russia. The main provisions take effect on January 1, 2027. As The Times of Central Asia previously reported, work-related entries into Russia by citizens of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan fell by approximately 15% in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier.

Art and Culture

Threading a New Canon: Interview with Batima Zaurbekova

How does an artist born in a remote village in Kazakhstan become one of the country’s most recognized artists? “I realised that if I put in the work, I can achieve everything,” says Batima Zaurbekova, a pioneer of Kazakh tapestry, as she walks through Threads of Heritage at the Abylkhan Kasteyev National Museum of Arts in Almaty. The exhibition runs from September 25 to November 8, 2026. An energetic lady with a strong personality and a playful attitude, Zaurbekova is the subject of a retrospective marking her 80th birthday and consecrating a lifetime of artistic production, at a time when Kazakhstan, event after event, is gaining ever greater international cultural recognition. Video: TCA. Narration: Naima Morelli. It is indeed a momentous time to be in the art world in Kazakhstan. At the forefront of the discourses on de-coloniality in the arts, and among those contributing to a new canon of contemporary art, Kazakh artists like Zaurbekova embody what is truest to their culture and local specificity, letting it flow in the global discourse. [caption id="attachment_58628" align="alignnone" width="936"] Detail of Batima Zaurbekova’s The Bride’s Farewell (2003). Credit: Naima Morelli.[/caption] The passion with which Zaurbekova describes even the smallest technical details reveals her deep love for weaving. That devotion is also a political stance in the face of the Western canon of art history. The reclamation of an art canon which would belong to Central Asia started in the second half of the 20th century, when artists worldwide challenged the relegation of textiles to the category of craft. Starting from the very local arts of felt and weaving, and against the canon of Soviet painting, a generation of artists recovered something that was truly theirs and called it by its name: not simply craft, but art in its own right, with Zaurbekova at the heart of that movement. [caption id="attachment_58629" align="alignnone" width="2560"] Entrance display for Threads of Heritage at the Abylkhan Kasteyev National Museum of Arts in Almaty. Credit: Kirill Fedorov.[/caption] A matriarchal line While today biennales and fair around the world look for those artists whose cultural background is legible in their art, it wasn’t always like that. When Zaurbekova began weaving in the late 1960s, her teachers strongly discouraged her from devoting herself to weaving. Her teachers, many of whom had trained in Leningrad and Moscow, saw her as a painter, at a time when textiles were still considered a “lower” type of art, and far too slow and demanding. “I’d spend fifteen hours every day for days on end working on just one tapestry, and my teachers would tell me: ‘It’s so slow! In the same amount of time you could have painted three paintings already!” she tells me, laughing. They used to scold her with a Kazakh saying for it: “You’re digging a huge well with a small needle.” Zaurbekova was born in 1946 in Furmanovka, in the Moiynkum district of the Jambyl region, and grew up in Merke, where her family moved when she was in fifth...

U.S.-Uzbekistan Relations

Uzbekistan’s U.S. Package: What Supports the $12 Billion Figure?

Uzbekistan announced a package of 54 agreements and prospective initiatives that it valued at about $12 billion during U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to Samarkand on October 19. The Ministry of Investment, Industry and Trade lists engine supplies from GE Aerospace for new Uzbekistan Airways aircraft as part of the package. The investment ministry makes that value conditional on implementation. The presidency’s account says a comprehensive implementation program will be developed for the agreements and initiatives. October’s $12 billion may include projects still awaiting finance or development, but the values assigned to them must have an identifiable basis in project estimates or specific transactions. The official announcements identify counterparties and sectors, but the evidence examined does not provide the individual values needed to reconstruct the $12 billion total. Earlier Announcements and Additional Value In November 2025, Donald Trump announced that Uzbekistan would undertake roughly $35 billion in purchases and investment in American sectors over the following three years. The stated total did not separate the amounts assigned to purchases and investment. Uzbekistani purchases from American suppliers and investment in American sectors cannot be counted as an equivalent inflow of U.S. capital into Uzbekistan. Purchasing American equipment and receiving American investment give Uzbekistani participants different roles in the financing and implementation of projects. In September 2026, Investment Minister Laziz Kudratov said projects worth $7 billion had already been completed within a $35 billion portfolio. UzDaily described the figure as one-fifth of the value of the previous year’s agreements, without identifying the completed projects or defining completion. A transaction-level account would show what equipment was delivered, which facilities were commissioned, and what contract payments were made, giving the value and completion date of each transaction. October’s $12 billion cannot be added to the earlier figures without reconciling the transactions included in each package and the values assigned to them. The matching $35 billion figures do not establish that Kudratov and Trump referred to the same transaction list. An October agreement could introduce a fresh transaction or add obligations within an existing project, but it could also cover work already reflected in an earlier valuation. A company’s reappearance in successive announcements does not establish which relationship applies. What the Agreements Establish American Resources Corporation and ReElement Technologies announced an October 19 agreement with Uzbekistan Technological Metals Complex and the Fund for Reconstruction and Development, advancing their November 2025 memorandum. ReElement’s release describes a further stage of technical and commercial work under an existing partnership, but it provides no valuation showing how that work contributes to the $12 billion total. The companies report successful processing of Uzbek-sourced tungsten into high-purity oxide. The planned demonstration at ReElement’s U.S. facilities is intended to evaluate commercial viability, processing efficiency, and scalability; preliminary engineering and economic modeling concern possible refining operations in Uzbekistan. In the financial sector, the investment ministry describes Franklin Templeton, Oppenheimer, Citigroup, and BlackRock as helping to attract capital, but does not explain whether or how these arrangements contribute to the $12 billion...