Once haunted by continuous threats of famine and heavily dependent on grain imports from Europe and the Americas, the former USSR’s agro-sector is now characterised by sharp discrepancies between the respective republics. While the Russian Federation having developed into the world’s largest grain exporter, most of Central Asia remains dependent on imports for secondary supplies, even though each and every one of them has the potential to become a net exporter. As for Kazakhstan, which exports about half of its annual output using a joint marketing and outlet structure with Russia, its productivity keeps lagging behind its capacity.
Over the first 8 months of the current year, Kazakhstan’s agro-output’s cash value accounted for 1.775 trillion Kazakh tenge, a nominal increase of 2.4 per cent on-year but given the depreciation of the national currency of some 20 per cent between the two periods a net decrease of well over 15 per cent. Crops this year so far stand for a cash value of close to 1.3 trillion tenge, followed by livestock with a value close to KZT460 billion. Though modest in sheer amounts for a nation that has a glorious history in cattle breeding, has doubled that of crops as of September 1, with physical numbers of 7.631 horned cattle registered (+6% o-y) along with 19.1 million sheep (+0.7% and minor numbers of goats, camels and other.
As of July 1 this year, Kazakhstan’s agro-output’s cash value stood at just over a trillion Kazakh tenge from the beginning of the year – about $3 billion based on current exchange rates. In Kyrgyzstan, the amount came close to 55.7 billion Kyrgyz som or about 0.75 billion US dollar and in the Russian Federation to 1.6 trillion rouble or in the order of $250 billion. In Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, the amounts stood at 35.2 billion Uzbek soum and just over 7 billion Tajik somoni, respectively. None of these former Soviet republics reached a sector growth exceeding 5 per cent on-year with the exception of Tajikistan with an impressive figure of 8.5 per cent on-year, even though in sheer volumes it is down the list in terms of productivity.
There seem to be various reasons for the discrepancies. Further into summer, as of August 1, Kazakhstan scored harvests of cereals of 2.2 million tonne of cereals on 1.3 million hectare, with an average yield of 1.69 tonne per hectare, according to figures posted by the National statistics Agency – a 3.5 per cent increase from the first seven months of 2017. In Kyrgyzstan, just over 200,000 hectare had been harvested with an average yield of 2.54 tonne per hectare,
In Russia, close to 8.4 million hectare had been harvested with an output of just below 30.1 million tonne (+8.1% o-y) and an average yield of 3.68 tonne per hectare. Tajikistan had harvested 564,000 tonne to date covering 212,000 hectare or 96.5 per cent of its cultivated land, with an average yield of 2.66 tonne per hectare, a 4.7 on-year decline. No data for Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have been given to date. However, the overall picture is clear: Central Asia could easily join the ex-USSR “Agro Club” and add to its clout in the global market place. A joint investment pool, combined with a joint marketing strategy and practice, will be indispensable to get there.
By Charles van der Leeuw for Newsline, based on data from the CIS Interstate Statistics Committee and the Kazakh National Statistics Agency.
