Central Asia at 25

After a decade of growth based on hydrocarbon booms, Central Asian countries are faced with increasing challenges to complete their transitions to a m

Publishing date: 05 May 2017
Authors: Marek Dabrowski Uuriintuya Batsaikhan

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Central Asia, though referred to as a single region, consists of five culturally and ethnically diverse countries that have followed different political and economic transformation paths in the last 25 years since independence from the Soviet Union.

After experiencing more than a decade of growth based on hydrocarbon booms, these countries are faced with increasing challenges resulting from falling commodity prices, declining trade and lower migrant remittances. The main policy challenge is to move away from commodity-based growth strategies to macro-oriented diversification and adoption of a broad spectrum of economic, institutional and political reforms. However, structural diversification is easier said than done.

Our analysis suggests five key policy lessons that could serve as points of departure as these countries move ahead.

About the authors

Marek Dabrowski

Dr. Marek Dabrowski is a Non-Resident Scholar at Bruegel, and Fellow at CASE - Centre for Social and Economic Research in Warsaw.

He was co-founder of CASE (1991), Chairman of the CASE Supervisory Council and its President of Management Board (1991-2011), Chairman of the Supervisory Board of CASE Ukraine in Kyiv (1999-2009 and 2013-2015), Member of the Board of Trustees and Scientific Council of the E.T. Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy in Moscow (1996-2016), Professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow (2014-2022), Visiting Professor at the Central European University in Vienna (2023-2024), and Fellow under the 2014-2015 Fellowship Initiative of the European Commission – Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs. He is a former First Deputy Minister of Finance of Poland (1989-1990), Member of Parliament (1991-1993) and Member of the Monetary Policy Council of the National Bank of Poland (1998-2004).

Since the end of 1980s he has been involved in policy advising and policy research in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Egypt, Georgia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Somali, Syria, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Yemen, and in a number of international research projects related to monetary and fiscal policies, growth and poverty, currency crises, international financial architecture, perspectives of European integration, European Neighborhood Policy, trade policy, and political economy of transition.

He has also worked as a consultant in a number of EU, World Bank, IMF, UNDP, OECD and USAID projects. Marek is the author of several academic and policy papers, and editor of several book publications.
Uuriintuya Batsaikhan

Uuriintuya Batsaikhan, a Mongolian citizen, has worked as an Affiliate Fellow in the area of European and Global Macroeconomics and Governance. She has a Master’s Degree from the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest and a Master of Public Policy Degree specialising in political economy, economic institutions and monetary policy from Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. Prior to joining Bruegel, she worked at UNDP in Mongolia and the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin.

In her Master’s thesis, she analysed access to finance of SMEs during the financial crisis using a dynamic (dis)equilibrium model of credit demand and credit supply. At CEU, she wrote on the divergent means of inflation stabilization in post-transition Poland and Estonia and assessed the role of the Currency Board Arrangement (CBA) employed in Estonia.

Uuriintuya’s research interests include macroeconomics, banking and monetary policy, access to finance of SMEs and political economy of emerging countries.

She speaks Mongolian, English, Russian and German.

Declaration of interests 2016