Analysts from the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB) have updated the bank’s economic forecast for Kyrgyzstan. Despite high performance in the first half of the year, the country’s GDP growth may slow in the second half of this year.
In the first six months of this year, the growth of the Kyrgyz economy remained at 8.1%. The majority of this growth was due to domestic trade and the construction sector (50%).
However, industrial production dynamics remained restrained (0.9%) against a background of declining production in extractive industries and zero growth in manufacturing output. At the same time, production in agriculture increased by 3.3%.
According to the EDB analysts, “Despite the strong performance during the first half of the year, we believe that GDP growth will slow down in the second half of 2024. The pace of consumer lending in the current year is lower than in the previous year.”
They also noted that real wages in the first quarter of 2024 grew by 5.3%, compared to 24% the previous year.
“These factors will restrain consumer activity, which will be reflected in a slowdown in GDP growth to 5.5% by the end of this year,” the EDB forecast reads.
