Deputy Minister of Finance Mirlan Baigonchokov has a sound experience of working with the Ministry of Finance since 1995 and was appointed Deputy Minister of Finance in 2010. He discusses the government’s current financial-sector goals.
European Times: What are the priorities of the Ministry of Finance?
Mirlan Baigonchokov: Our focus is on supporting the government’s mission of maintaining macroeconomic and political stability and continuing the process of liberal reforms. Since independence, Kyrgyzstan has seen major reforms in the public sector including the financial sector. A major accomplishment is that we have optimised public spending and made it efficient.
In 2008 we began a successful three-year budget programme under the supervision of the World Bank and the IMF. We are currently working with the IMF in a programme targeting microeconomic stability up to 2014 that includes controlling inflation, achieving budget consolidation, reducing external debt and continued reforms of the banking sector. Our main priority is to continue to reduce the budget deficit through effective management of the national budget. We also want to speed up reforms and further increase the efficiency of the public finance management.
European Times: How has Kyrgyzstan coped with the global financial crisis?
Mirlan Baigonchokov: The financial sector has proved generally stable. While some commercial banks had liquidity problems, this helped us to identify some improvements we needed to make in our financial-sector legislation, and we have addressed this through reforms. In 2000, for instance, we had a budget deficit of 9% of GDP, and we managed to reduce this to 5% of GDP in 2011. Our target is to continue to lower the budget deficit to 3%. We also reduced inflation from 20% in 2010 to 9% in 2011; we expect the total for 2012 to be around 8%. We reduced our external debt from 130% of GDP in 1990 to 47.7% in 2011 thanks to reforms.
European Times: How would you describe the investment climate in Kyrgyzstan?
Mirlan Baigonchokov: Kyrgyzstan has been steadily improving its ranking in the World Bank’s Doing Business Report through further improving the business climate. We have a liberal investment climate, and foreign investors have access to all sectors. The legislation that protects investors’ interests was adopted. Kyrgyzstan offers significant investment opportunities, for example through the privatisation of state-owned companies and creating a system for public-private partnerships. We welcome foreign investors.
