BISHKEK (TCA) — According to the Ministry of Labor and Social Development of Kyrgyzstan, 360.2 thousand people from low-income families receive monthly state benefit payments, and most of those families have children (275.9 thousand). The number of applicants for state benefits grows by 2% a year.

In 2018, the State will allocate 5.330 billion soms from its budget for this purpose, which is 1.8 billion soms more than in 2017.

The criteria for determining the family’s poverty are being revised now. “Ownership of a car or a tractor, a land plot that generates income, as well as a livestock is now taken into account,” Labor and Social Development Minister Taalaykul Isakunova said on March 2 at a Parliament’s meeting to discuss the implementation of legislation on state benefits.

Meanwhile, the minister is not sure that these benefits are effective and help people get out of poverty. “No studies have been conducted on this issue. As for me, I believe this does not help,” the minister said.

In Kyrgyzstan, 271,000 families live below the subsistence minimum, which is 4,900 soms ($72) per person per month, MP Ruslan Kazakbaev said. According to him, 120 thousand families spend less than $1 a day. “In rural areas, one-day expenditures of one family do not reach even one dollar,” he said.

The implementation of the law “On State Benefit Payments” adopted in 2017 has many shortcomings, Kazakbaev added. “About 7-8 billion soms is necessary to implement the law but there are no sources of financing,” he said.

“According to the International Labor Organization, about 580,000 children work in Kyrgyzstan, and 13% of children receive state benefits, while 27% do not receive this support from the state,” the MP said. He stressed the importance of increasing benefits to families in real need, and families with children with disabilities.

Poverty still high

According to World Bank experts, poverty is decreasing in Kyrgyzstan. Nevertheless, about 1.6 million of the country’s six million population lives below the poverty line defined at 31,151 soms per capita per year.

The extreme poverty is still high, 0.8% of the population. Eight out of ten people living below the poverty line live in rural areas. Households that are large with young children have a much higher probability of living below the poverty line.

Agriculture and services are still the main sectors of the economy in terms of employment. A third of the population and about 36% of those among the poorest persons works in the agricultural sector.

Labor incomes per capita have increased, which together with the increased remittances allowed raising welfare and reducing poverty. Yet these remittances were mostly used to increase private consumption and the construction of housing rather than investment in the economy.

Significant territorial differences affected the poverty reduction, which fell significantly in Bishkek and Jalal-Abad cities due to significant economic growth and a more active trade development.

According to the WB forecast, poverty reduction is expected this year.

A modest increase in agricultural and construction growth forecasts and a further increase in remittances are likely to contribute to poverty reduction in rural areas in 2018. It is expected that wages in the private sector will grow slowly, which will lead to a small reduction in poverty in the cities.

Planned increase of pensions also should help poor households, considering that pensions account for about 15% of income of low-income citizens. The poverty level is expected to drop to 22.2% in 2018 compared to 25.6% in 2016.

Tackling poverty depends on the Government’s economic policies including the regional distribution of state budget funds. It is likely that poverty will continue to fall in the short-term with greater out-migration and remittance income, the WB says.

Housing program

The current state housing program is not available for the majority of Kyrgyzstan’s citizens. First of all, the most vulnerable budget-paid employees — doctors and teachers — suffer, MP Aida Kasymalieva said at a parliament session on the implementation of the Affordable Housing 2015-2020 Government program.

“Out of more than 11 thousand applicants for mortgage loans, 2.7 thousand only were included in the list, and 1.3 thousand withdrew their applications,” Kasymalieva said, adding that the solvency of budget-paid employees does not allow them to get a loan. She stressed the growing number of citizens’ complaints about the lack of access to information about the procedure for obtaining a loan.

“It is necessary to extend the period of state mortgage lending to 25 years and reduce interest rates. Teacher and doctors cannot pay 20 thousand soms a month,” MP Isa Omurkulov said.

According to the head of the State Mortgage Company (SMC), Baktybek Shamkeev, the SMC in engaged in refinancing, that is, receiving budgetary loans for mortgage lending to the population. Since 2016, more than 2,700 citizens have purchased housing through mortgage loans at 8-10% interest for 15 years while commercial banks provide loans at 18-26% for five years.

The SMC also participates in the mortgage securities market development. The Government recently decided to invest 140 million soms in mortgage-backed securities.

The State Mortgage Company plans to build eight thousand square meters of housing in 2018 and 130 thousand square meters in 2019.

ASTANA (TCA) — Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Agriculture has outlined the main tasks for the development of the country’s agro-industrial complex (AIC), the official website of the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan reported.

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KABUL (TCA) — A group of 70 Taliban militants are ready to join the peace process in support of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural-gas pipeline project in Afghanistan, TOLOnews reported on March 4 citing local officials.

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BISHKEK (TCA) — The Russian Foreign Ministry on March 3 criticized the claims by US Central Command (CENTCOM) commander Gen. Joseph Votel on Moscow’s influence in Central Asia, saying that Russia maintains a mutually beneficial cooperation with the regional states, while Washington only pursues its own interests, Russia’s Sputnik news agency reported.

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ASTANA (TCA) — On the day of the 26th anniversary of Kazakhstan’s accession to the United Nations, an official ceremony was held at the UN Headquarters for signing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons by the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said.

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BISHKEK (TCA) — The Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is pushing legalization of private military and security companies. The move, if successful and replicated by Russia and other CSTO member states, will potentially enable citizens of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to take part in Russia’s military operations abroad, becoming another labor migration opportunity for people from Central Asia. We are republishing this article on the issue by Anna Gussarova, originally published by The Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia Daily Monitor:

The Secretariat of the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s (CSTO) Parliamentary Assembly is currently examining a bill on private military and security organizations (Private Military Companies—PMC) (RIA Novosti, February 5). If adopted inside the Moscow-led alliance, the individual CSTO member states will then be tasked with introducing domestic laws to legitimize the activities of such commercial paramilitary groups.

This issue is relatively new to all CSTO countries except Russia. In 2012, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed full support for establishing an official PMC system in his country. Since that time, however, the Kremlin has experienced certain difficulties in dealing with these organizations. On the one hand, the country has widely relied on PMCs—for example, Slavonic Corps Limited as well as Wagner Group (Vz.ru, February 21)—in Ukraine, Syria and, according to some reports, Sudan (UAWire, December 5, 2017) to protect “its national interests and people.” But on the other hand, Russia’s Penal Code officially still prohibits citizens from becoming mercenaries—Russians face three to seven years of imprisonment for participating in a foreign armed conflict or military operation outside the regular Armed Forces.

Whereas the Russian parliament has been unsuccessfully trying to legalize PMCs for the past five years, the country’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and Ministry of Defense have more recently stepped up their own efforts to push through the law (Rosbalt, February 19). And in January 2018, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also announced the need to legally protect Russians who participate in PMCs outside the country (RBC, January 15). Finally, the growing number of incidents of regular Russian military personnel killed in Syria (see EDM, January 11, 16, 17, February 8) has put increasing pressure on the Kremlin to provide additional support to the Armed Forces fighting abroad.

Whereas the exact text of the proposed CSTO law on PMCs is unavailable, Victor Ananiev, the director of the Moscow-based Institute for Security and Sustainable Development, which was in charge of drafting this legislation, has outlined some key features found therein. First, the document apparently denotes non-combatant status on such organizations. However, this point is still unclear, particularly since Russian State Duma representatives believe PMC personnel could protect allies from external aggression and participate in counter-terrorism operations—meaning they would effectively have to have combatant status (Dailystorm.ru, January 18).

Another issue involves the potential social benefits a person receives while working for private military and security companies. For instance, the draft law mandates that a PMC contractor receive compulsory insurance in case of death, injury or damage, kidnapping and ransom demands, even if serving in a foreign country. In addition, there is a proposal to legally consider service with a PMC as work experience. Such regulations would clearly be quite attractive for experienced and mid-level professionals as well as young men: currently, over five million retired and former military personnel face social and economic hardships in Russia (Rosbalt.ru, February 19).

Additionally, the draft legislation on PMCs outlines minimum qualifications for taking on such work. It appears those qualifications are relatively minimal, open to any 18-year-old (or older) citizen from a CSTO-member country who has completed at least vocational training and successfully passed the necessary exams (Pnp.ru, February 5). In the future, it could mean that, in particular, both young and middle-aged men from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, for instance, may be interested in signing contracts to serve with regional PMCs, based on promises of more lucrative salaries.

Finally, the document clarifies potential customers of PMC services. They can be state executive bodies, foreign government agencies on the basis of bilateral agreements, and international organizations. It remains unclear what specific categories of international organization will legally be allowed to make use of the services of private military and security companies within the CSTO—and what duties undertaken by the PMCs in those situations will be legally valid. However, according to CSTO vice chairman Valery Semerikov, the organization is planning to establish its own peacekeeping forces that will be able to operate under the a United Nations mandate (Mir24.tv, February 8).

For now, the PMC law under discussion by the CSTO member states remains quite ambiguous. Yet, there are already various questions in the region regarding Russia’s goals and motivation behind pushing this idea on the entire bloc. It seems pretty clear that this alliance directive will speed up Russia’s ongoing domestic debate about passing its own PMC law. And Russia may want to employ PMCs in Afghanistan in the near future (Ratel.kz, February 20). Moreover, Moscow’s apparent expectation that PMCs might be employed against external aggressors or in counter-terrorism operations raises the question of whether their functions might significantly overlap with the already existing Collective Rapid Reaction Force within the Russia-led regional alliance. At the same time, the overall initiative brings to mind the Kremlin’s repeated attempts to push other CSTO countries into sharing more security responsibilities in Russia’s broader neighborhood. Of particular note were Russia’s unsuccessful efforts to involve CSTO countries in a UN peacekeeping force in Ukraine as well as Moscow’s wish to send military troops from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to Syria (Ktk.kz, June 23, 2017). Finally, as noted above, the Kremlin has increasingly come to rely on PMCs in various “hybrid” (New Type) warfare scenarios and other regional conflicts.

Clearly, even as they discuss Moscow’s PMC initiative within the CSTO, Russian allies will need to be wary of the potential challenges they could increasingly face in supporting Russian operations abroad.