On 20 January, 2021 Turkmenistan’s officials and representatives of the International Monetary Fund held an online meeting, the state information agency TDH reports.
Turkmenistan reported that despite the negative impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on world economies, “thanks to the preventive measures promptly undertaken by President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, the economy of Turkmenistan is demonstrating stable performance, which allows to maintain a high GSP growth rate compared to other countries”.
“This has been greatly facilitated by small, medium and large enterprises commissioned in recent years, which manufacture a wide range of goods for domestic use and for export.
Moreover, thousands of jobs have been created”, – TDH says.However, according to sources at “Chronicles of Turkmenistan”, since 1 January large-scale staff redundancies have been underway in the public sector and police force.
All enterprises are committed to manufacturing value added products, which have contributed to increasing the volume and the growth rate of GDP.
Entrepreneurship plays a significant role in the development of the national economy. According to TDH, the implementation of the state programs, initiated by the President, which are designed to produce import substitution and export-oriented goods, allowed to increase the share of the private sector in GDP.
The report devoted to the economic situation in Turkmenistan has not been published on the IMF website yet.
The IMF mission, who previously paid working visits to Turkmenistan, repeatedly recommended that the Turkmen authorities ease administrative control, move to a market-based economy and promote competition with the view of enhancing competitiveness of goods and services.
According to the IMF experts, Turkmenistan’s national currency is overvalued.
It should be emphasized that at the Cabinet session to sum up the 2020 results President Berdymukhammedov said that the GDP growth was 5,9%.
At the same time, in April 2020, the financial agency Fitch Solutions said that the data submitted by the Turkmen government is known to be unreliable and predicted a real GDP growth of 1,4%.The post Turkmenistan reports a high GDP growth rate during the pandemic to the IMF, thanks to Berdymukhammedov’s initiatives first appeared on Chronicles of Turkmenistan.