BISHKEK (TCA) — Kyrgyzstan has simplified the conditions for obtaining work permits for foreign citizens. Earlier, six documents were required to obtain such permits, while only two documents are needed now, Medetbek Aydaraliev, Chairman of the State Migration Service of Kyrgyzstan, said at a press conference in Bishkek.

In addition, the period for considering applications for work permits for foreigners has been reduced from one month to ten working days. As a result, bureaucratic barriers companies have often complained about have been reduced.

The State Migration Service (SMS) has also begun accepting documents electronically, thus fulfilling the Government’s Taza Koom (Clean Society) program.

This work has been intensified after Kyrgyzstan’s Prime Minister Sapar Isakov criticized the SMS for delaying the process of issuing work permits. The Government received many complaints from foreign citizens, including investors, entrepreneurs, employees, and university teachers. The process of issuing permits was opaque, slow and uncomfortable, they said.

“We attract investors and good teachers to universities but state bodies do not allow them to develop due to the process of issuing permits,” Isakov said.

“The Government should create the most convenient process for applying for a work permit. Our legislation should be attractive for investors, so that large enterprises, businesses could open,” the Prime Minister said.

He ordered to simplify the procedure for issuing work permits for investors in a week’s time, as well as to shorten the list of documents and consider the possibility of extending the work permit for foreigners to three years if they have an appropriate confirmation of the duration of the contract or long-term investment plans.
Isakov also ordered to develop clear criteria for a motivated refusal to issue a work permit.

Russian FMS blacklist shortened

The SMS Chairman Aidaraliev also told the press conference that every year, the number of Kyrgyz citizens on the blacklist of the Federal Migration Service of Russia is declining. The FMS blacklist is a list of foreigners who violated the current migration legislation of Russia and were banned from entering the Russian Federation.

As of January 1, 2018, about 77 thousand Kyrgyz citizens were blacklisted, while there were 110 thousand on January 1, 2017, and 180 thousand in 2015.

According to official data, 640 thousand Kyrgyz citizens are now working in Russia, which is 88% of the total number of Kyrgyz migrants.

The State Migration Service of Kyrgyzstan proposed not to blacklist those Kyrgyz citizens who violated the rules once, and to blacklist them after three violations. Negotiations on this issue will continue in the near future in Moscow within the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union.

EEU benefits

Supporters of Kyrgyzstan’s accession to the EEU say that Kyrgyzstan’s main benefit from the accession was the facilitation of the working conditions of migrants in comparison with those from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan (countries that are not EEU members).

The migration statistics show that due to the economic crisis in Russia and the tightening of migration laws, the number of migrants from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan declined by 15-20% from 2013 to 2016, and some growth began in 2017.

At the same time, the number of migrants from Kyrgyzstan began to grow since 2015, when the country entered the EEU, and now it has exceeded the pre-crisis level by 10%. This is a significant growth rate, despite the fact that the crisis still affects the Russian economy.

The fact that people from Central Asia are leaving for Russia means that there are favorable conditions for them to find jobs and earn money there.

Some migrants take root in Russia and remain there, while others, having earned the necessary money (for example, for housing construction) return to their homeland.
Migration from Kyrgyzstan is often a family one. Many Kyrgyz children study in Russian schools. Having received Russian citizenship, some migrants stay in Russia. A considerable number of labor migrants continue to live between the two states, returning to their homeland and then again leaving for work. This will happen until Kyrgyzstan develops its economy and creates jobs with decent wages.

Labor migrants’ remittances

Mass outflows of the labor force and the financial inflows profoundly altered the domestic economy, bringing strong short-term benefits, as well as problems.

The scale of out-migration from Kyrgyzstan is enormous and equivalent of 3.3% of the total population in the country, or 10% of the working-age population.

Kyrgyzstan is among the countries that are most dependent on money transfers. In 2017, remittances from Kyrgyz labor migrants exceeded $2.48 billion, which is equivalent to almost a third of the country’s GDP and manifold higher than FDI inflows. More than 90% of remittances were from Russia.

According to a study, about 75% of Kyrgyzstan’s migrants are men aged 18-35, and most of them have a complete secondary and even higher education. Most of them were unemployed before departure, engaged in agriculture or worked in the services sector in cities.

The main motivation for migration was the search for income to meet daily needs. In the surveys, most migrants indicated that they left their homeland because their families needed money or because of a lack of job opportunities in the home country.

The motivation to make savings/investments was less significant and was mainly focused on family events and buying real estate. The remittances were mainly used for food and housing, and only 8% of respondents spent their money for children’s education and 3% for business investment.

BISHKEK (TCA) — The Russian city of Chelyabinsk has been chosen as the venue for the meeting of the Council of Heads of SCO member states and the meeting of BRICS leaders in 2020 in accordance with a Decree ‘On the Organizing Committee for Preparing and Securing the Chairmanship of the Russian Federation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in 2019–2020 and in the BRICS Union in 2020’ signed by President Vladimir Putin.

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DUSHANBE (TCA) — In Tajikistan, more than 20 percent of children under the age of five are stunted. Stunting and undernutrition in childhood are usually the result of several contributing factors related to environment, food, hygiene, and health. Risks related to malnutrition are most concentrated in rural areas of Tajikistan, underscoring the large disparity between rural and urban areas, the World Bank reported on March 20.

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BISHKEK (TCA) — A kindergarten was inaugurated in Besh-Koruk village in the rural municipality of Aleksandrovka in Kyrgyzstan’s northern Chui province on March 19. One hundred new places for children between 2.5 and 6 years are created. This has been achieved with the support of the local municipality and the project “Strengthening Voice and Accountability” funded by the Government of Switzerland through the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and implemented by the Development Policy Institute, the Embassy of Switzerland in the Kyrgyz Republic said.

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BISHKEK (TCA) — Fifteen Kyrgyzstani tour operators participated in Kyrgyzstan’s exhibition at ITB in Berlin, one of the world’s largest travel and tourism fairs, earlier this month. More than 10,000 companies and organizations from 186 countries and regions exhibited their products to trade visitors and consumers over the five-day event. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) assisted the delegation in organizing Kyrgyzstan’s exhibition space as part of its efforts to promote tourism in the country, the US Embassy in Kyrgyzstan reported.

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BISHKEK (TCA) — After the closure of the US air force base at Bishkek’s Manas airport in Kyrgyzstan in 2014, the US has been losing the competition with Russia and China in the sphere of military cooperation with the Central Asian country. We are republishing this article on the issue by Joshua Kucera, originally published by Eurasianet:

The United States appears to have given up on military cooperation with Kyrgyzstan – once its closest partner in Central Asia – because Bishkek has thrown its lot in with Russia and China, a senior US general has said.

General Joseph Votel, the commander of US Central Command, testified before the US Senate last week to present CENTCOM’s annual “posture statement,” its assessment of what the US military is doing in the region. And in his prepared remarks on Central Asia, he offered a striking rebuke of Bishkek’s unwillingness to partner with the Americans.

“The Kyrgyz Republic has increasingly aligned its interests with Russia and China,” Votel testified, citing the closure of the US air force base in Manas in 2014 and the subsequent breakdown of US-Kyrgyzstan military ties. Votel laid the blame with Kyrgyzstan’s government: “Despite the Kyrgyz armed forces’ desire to improve military-to-military cooperation with CENTCOM, Kyrgyz senior civilian leaders have shown little interest in improving military relations,” he said.

Votel didn’t mention any sort of ongoing military cooperation with Bishkek, as he did with all the other Central Asian states, even fiercely isolationist Turkmenistan.

Kyrgyzstan’s ties with China and especially Russia are nothing new, but as of a year ago Votel still thought that there was hope in the US-Kyrgyzstan military relationship. “Despite ongoing challenges in our bilateral and security cooperation, we continue to seek opportunities to improve our mil-to-mil relationship,” he testified in the 2017 posture statement.

“After a lengthy period of time during which few bilateral activities occurred, the Kyrgyz military may be increasingly receptive to higher level military engagements and expanded cooperation in the areas of border security, counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, and countering violent extremism…. Looking ahead, we intend to pursue opportunities for increased cooperation while taking steps to strengthen our relationships with the Kyrgyz.”

Kyrgyzstan had been one of the US’s top beneficiaries of special forces training in Central Asia, but those trainings abruptly stopped after the Manas closure. Nevertheless, according to recently released State Department documents that detail US military training activities over the last two years, the US continued a wide variety of training activities for Kyrgyzstan’s armed forces in 2016, like English-language courses and management training. It even had planned to restart special forces training with Kyrgyzstan in 2017, but it’s not clear whether those trainings happened, and Votel’s testimony suggest that they didn’t.

Kyrgyzstan is not the only place the US sees competition from Russia and China. Votel made frequent references to Central Asia, as well as the rest of the CENTCOM area of responsibility (which also includes parts of South Asia and the Middle East), as a zero-sum Brzezinskiesque chessboard. This has been a commonplace among analysts of the region, but until recently had been relatively rare in official US rhetoric. This follows the release of last year’s National Security Strategy document, which also to an unprecedented degree framed the post-Soviet region as an arena of competition between great powers.

“Russia … maintains significant influence in Central Asia, where the countries of the former-Soviet Union rely on Russia to varying degrees for their economic and security needs,” Votel testified last week. “This is problematic as Russia’s efforts could limit US engagement options and provide Moscow additional levers of influence, particularly as NATO forces deployed in Afghanistan are dependent on Central Asian partners for logistical support. Since 2014, Russia has increased Eurasian integration efforts to reassert Moscow’s dominant influence along the periphery or buffer zone. Likewise, an increasingly assertive China is testing Russia’s dominance in the economic and security arenas of Central Asia but also posing challenges to US influence. China seeks to capitalize on regional concerns over what it perceives as waning US influence and support.”

In contrast to Kyrgyzstan, the US’s military ties with Uzbekistan appear to be on the rise. Last year, Votel testified that the US was “cautiously optimistic” about Uzbekistan after the presidential transition following the death of former president Islam Karimov. But he also noted that prospects were limited due to President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s continuation of his predecessor’s policy of not allowing foreign military bases or joining alliances.

This year, he suggested that the optimism was warranted. “We are now seeing positive changes within Uzbekistan that are leading to improved military-to-military relations, to include increased military professionalization and training,” he testified. “CENTCOM is also working to improve its military’s logistics and sustainment systems to better support previously transferred U.S. defense equipment. We also continue efforts to bolster Uzbekistan’s special operations forces.”

He also noted: “Our bilateral relations [with Uzbekistan] serve to counter Russian and Chinese influence in the region.”

As was the case last year, Kazakhstan represents the US’s “most advanced military relationship in Central Asia,” Votel said, despite the fact that “[r]eliance on Russian-produced equipment presents challenges to developing a more robust defense sales relationship.”

In Tajikistan, the US continued its focus on helping the country secure its long border with Afghanistan. “While US-Tajik relations are positive, Russia is increasingly impinging on U.S. influence and spreading inaccurate information about Afghanistan and the region,” Votel said.