Beschreibung:
In the first half of 2023, real economic growth in the Kyrgyz Republic decelerated to 3.9 percent, down from 6.3 percent in 2022, due to a decline in remittance receipts and a cyclical slowdown in gold and agricultural production. The slowdown in growth this year has generally mirrored the trends in most other economies in the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is mainly attributable to the reversal of favorable cyclical factors on the supply side of the economy, which had boosted output of agriculture and gold in 2022, and a reduction of 29 percent in remittance receipts (most of which are sourced from Kyrgyz migrant workers in Russia), which constrained household consumption on the demand side. Tourism and the emergence of a substantial transit trade with Russia have supported growth in some of the service industries, and there were also indicators of a recovery of fixed investment expenditures in the first half of 2023. The stabilization of food prices will also benefit from supply-side measures to address market failures and improve the overall performance of the agricultural sector. These include, among others, improving the functioning of input markets and service provisions (for example, agricultural advice, transport, and marketing services), reducing high transaction costs (associated with access to essential inputs and services such as water, electricity, extension services, and logistics), and addressing information asymmetries leading to weak linkages between small farms and enterprises. Government interventions in these areas are needed to improve small farmers and agri-food processors' access to markets and to create more opportunities to capture value and improve their livelihoods