In the Kyrgyzstan National Sustainable Development Strategy, the history of the yester years of the country following the collapse of the Soviet Union was well referenced as it was said to put the country in “survival mode” as the Soviet Union time was a lost opportunity for the country.

The strategy does not failed to address some past intervention from donor countries and international organizations who enacted projects like “Comprehensive Development Framework” (2001), “National Poverty Reduction Strategy” (2003), “New Economic Policy” (2009) and others which all heads are down mainly because of the bad governance, corruption and criminalization of certain state institutions during the first two presidents of the country.

The strategy express readiness to change the system for a more direct goal with clearly defined target indicators, shared by the people and the common vision of them.

The strategic vision of Kyrgyzstan in the long term is a strong and independent country that is part of the developed countries, a place that is comfortable for living, a place where their rights, freedoms, and security are ensured, a multi-lingual and friendly domestic environment governed by the rule of law, a country with high level of education, healthy natural environment, public stability, international image of state with stable background, robust economic growth and high attractiveness for investors[1].

In the next five years (period of 2013-2017) Kyrgyzstan faces a task of succeeding as a democratic state with stable political system, dynamically growing economy and stable growth in the incomes of its citizens. This National Strategy of Sustainable Development for the Kyrgyz Republic for the period 2013-2017 (“the Strategy”) is designed to ensure achievement of this task.

Despite the laser-focused strategic goal by the country, Kyrgyzstan’s Human Development Index value increased from 0.615 to 0.664 between 1990 and 2015 which is an increased of 7.9% which leaves the growth in the years of schooling of the country to be 2.2 years and an increased of 1.2 years in the expected years of schooling with a staggering 4.5 years increase in the country’s life expectancy[2].

Though, this leaves the Gross National Income of the country to decrease with about 9.1% between 1990 and 2015. In comparison to Armenia and Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan is performing great compared to the later and below the formal.

With this figure, can we really say the country is growing? Well, it depends on the metrics we are to use. Meanwhile, in the comparison of the goal with the result published by UND. The strategy is still far-fetched from the reality of the country. As this is 2017, will Kyrgyzstan abolish this strategy or are they going to build on it?

Footnotes:

[1] http://www.un-page.org/files/public/kyrgyz_national_sustainable_development_strategy.pdf

[2] http://hdr.undp.org/sites/all/themes/hdr_theme/country-notes/KGZ.pdf