Kyrgyzstan sees decrease in foreign investments

/By AzerNews/

By Vusala Abbasova

Kyrgyzstan saw a fall in the volume of direct foreign investments into the country in 2014.

"The inflow of foreign direct investments into the economy of Kyrgyzstan decreased by 37 percent to $608.5 million last year as compared to previous year," said Viktoriya Biryukova, the departments head at the National Statistics Committee,on Tuesday.

Foreign direct investments reduced on all the activities, except construction and information as well as communications fields.

Professional, scientific and technical activities, financial intermediation and insurance, manufacturing, and wholesale, as well as retail trade remained the most priority fields for investments.

The volume of foreign direct investments from foreign countries has decreased by 1.6 times in 2014 as compared to 2013, in particular, Chinese investments fell by 2.3 times, British by 1.5 times, and Canadian by 1.3 times, Biryukova stressed.

Meanwhile, Biryukova noted that Chinese capital was mainly directed to geological survey(48.2 percent), extraction of mineral resources (34.6 percent), and manufacturing (13.6percent). The bulk investments from Canada were directed at manufacturing enterprises (96.9 percent), while British investments focused on geological survey (91.8 percent).

The Central Asian country fixed cut by 1.8 times in the volume of foreign direct investments from the CIS countries in 2014 as compared to 2013, while the inflow of capital from Russia decreased by 3.2 times and from Kazakhstan by 10.7 percent.

Kazakhstan placed 44.5 percent of its direct investments in financial intermediation and insurance, wholesale and retail trade and manufacturing industries.Russia's investments were placed in manufacturing enterprises, as well as electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply enterprises.

Analysis into the sector revealed that "popular" fields for investment activities took the lead in an effort to ensure the swift reimbursement of investments. For instance 42 percent of the investments were put in real estate operations, rent and services to consumers in the first 9 months of 2013,when only 0.2 percent of all investments were fixed in the category of "agriculture, hunting and forestry".Nonetheless agriculture is an important sector of the Kyrgyz economy and a third of the working population are employed in it.

The overall situation challenged the Kyrgyz government over attracting "high-quality" investments able to contribute to the inflow of new technological solutions, more efficient use of resources and provide additional impetus to the development by stimulating related industries.