For the third week in a row President Berdymukhamedov vented his frustration with his subordinates, shuffling many key government positions as well as regional, municipal, and district officials.
Turkmenistan at the Bottom of Index of Economic Freedom
The Wall Street Journal and the US-based The Heritage Foundation, in their annual Index of Economic Freedom placed Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan at 162 and 169 respectively among the countries ranked as “repressed.” Rankings are based on four main criteria: trade freedom, business freedom, investment freedom, and property rights.
Investors operating in three post-Soviet Central Asian republics face an “extreme risk” of having their businesses expropriated, according to a survey released last week in the UK.
Maplecroft, a Bath-based political risk consultancy, said on January 9 that it had found plenty of reasons to be wary of the business climate in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan after “evaluating the risk to business from discriminatory acts by the government that reduces ownership, control or rights of private investments either gradually or as a result of a single action.” Recent fits of resource nationalism in Kyrgyzstan -- where the Kumtor gold mine, operated by Toronto-based Centerra Gold, accounted for 12 percent of GDP in 2011 and more than half the country’s industrial output – and rampant authoritarianism in places like Tajikistan and Turkmenistan have led Maplecroft to rank these countries among the most risky in the world. Not far behind, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan both fall in the “high risk” category.
Turkmenistan has big plans for its tourism industry in 2013, seeking to become a destination vacation spot. This year will see the construction of new hotels, campgrounds, resorts, and development of the Avaza resort on the Caspian coast.
