Transition Economies: Kyrgyz Republic Hosts Conference on Challenges Facing Economies in Transition

• Author: Robert Russell
• Position: IMF External Relations Department
• Pages: 196-197

Page 196

The Kyrgyz Republic and the IMF co-sponsored an international conference in Bishkek on May 27 and 28 to mark the fifth anniversary of the establishment of the Kyrgyz som as an independent national currency. The main themes of the conference-stabilization, growth, and governance-were discussed in a series of sessions featuring speakers, discussants, and questions from an audience of over 200 senior international and Kyrgyz officials, diplomats, professors, business executives, and bankers. Askar Akaev, President of the Kyrgyz Republic, and IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus spoke at the opening ceremonies.

The introduction of the som had been the country's first step toward an independent economic policy, Akaev said. He thanked the IMF for its support and counsel during the most difficult years of the development of the economy and the state. He cited the considerable progress the Kyrgyz Republic has made in stabilizing its economy, restoring growth, and restructuring on market principles. But he also cautioned against complacency, observing that it was too early to speak about the sustainability of high economic growth.

Akaev reaffirmed the Kyrgyz Republic's commitment to a second stage of reform in order to achieve higher growth, lower inflation, and higher living standards. The second stage, he said, will focus on institutional and legal reforms and on making the private sector the locomotive of sustainable economic growth.

In his address, Camdessus observed that the Kyrgyz Republic, under the leadership of President Akaev, had been at the forefront of reform within the countries of the former Soviet Union and should be a "source of inspiration" for countries in similar situations. After several years of an extremely difficult transition, the Kyrgyz Republic was starting to experience the benefits of its orientation toward a market economy: output has grown at about 7 percent for two years in a row; and inflation has been brought down from the destructive hyperinflation-ary level of 1,259 percent in 1992 to near single digits.

Camdessus noted that the Kyrgyz Republic's new program with the IMF aims to consolidate these gains and to make sure that the poor in particular benefit from economic expansion.

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