BISHKEK (TCA) — The Kyrgyz Government has recently put forward several initiatives aimed at replenishing the state budget at the expense of ordinary citizens. The Government offered to raise the tariffs for cold water and fines for violation of traffic rules, as well as to introduce mandatory paid registration of mobile phones. These suggestions caused a negative reaction of the society. Earlier, the Government appealed to citizens asking them to help pay the country's foreign debt. The total amount of Kyrgyzstan’s external debt amounted to $4.8 billion, or 53.9% of GDP at the end of 2017. Low living standards According to various international ratings, Kyrgyzstan has extremely low living standards of the population. Scanty budgetary expenditures on education, healthcare and social payments do not cover the real needs of citizens, and on average, every fourth Kyrgyz lives below the poverty line. In Kyrgyzstan, there are the lowest average wage ($216.3) and the highest outflow of labor migrants among the Eurasian Economic Union member countries. According to the Russian National Research University at Higher School of Economics, only Tajikistan has the worse situation with $137 wages while it is $670.9 in Russia followed by Kazakhstan ($459.1), Belarus ($421.9) and Armenia ($363.1). According to the Focus Economics Group’s rating of 127 countries based on GDP for 2018, Kyrgyzstan is among the ten poorest countries in the world. Kyrgyzstan’s GDP per capita was $1,081 in 2016, projected at $1,222 in 2018 and at $1,446 in 2022. “Having experienced considerable political and social instability with weak governance and high corruption since gaining independence in 1991, the country’s current democracy is a far cry from those days. Nonetheless corruption is still pervasive in the public sector, which constrains the country’s economic growth potential. The Kyrgyz economy is also vulnerable to external shocks due to its overreliance on its massive gold mine, Kumtor, which accounts for about 10% of GDP, as well as remittances, which amount to about 30% of GDP,” Focus Economics Consensus Forecast panelists say. Number of poor growing The number of citizens living below the poverty line has increased in Kyrgyzstan. According to the National Statistical Committee, the share of low-income citizens increased from 25.4% to 25.6% over the past year. The total number of the poor reached 1.6 million, 40 thousand people more than in 2016. That especially affected the population of the southern regions of the country. In the Batken province, the poverty level increased from 37% to 40.5%, and in Osh, the second largest city of the country, from 24.6% to 33.5%. Some experts do not believe official poverty statistics because poverty is underestimated. Last year, the poverty level was 2,674 soms per month per person, which is almost half of the subsistence minimum (4,900 soms). The extreme poverty line was even lower – 1,456 soms per month ($1 now costs 68 soms). The calculation of the poverty level is based on a methodology that is beneficial to the state, and does not give a real picture, experts say. In...
