| Abstract: |
Agricultural productivity in the Central Asian republics of the USSR stopped
growing from the late 1970s and declined in the 1990s when the transition to
the market occurred. As a result, most agricultural goods were uncompetitive
on the both the domestic market and the world market, and the agricultural
trade balance deteriorated as imports grew faster than exports. Although there
have been a few success stories – cereals in Uzbekistan, meat production in
Azerbaijan, oil seeds in Kazakhstan – the overall picture is not one of
agriculture as the driving force of the region’s future growth. We argue,
however, that the relative decline of agriculture is consistent with
international experience. In ‘economic miracle’ countries, the share of
agriculture fell faster than in other countries because the sector donated
labour to the industrial sector, which was the engine of growth. The problem
in Central Asia is not the slow growth of agricultural output, but the slow
growth of productivity in agriculture, which fails to increase the
competitiveness of agricultural products and leads to an inability of the
rural population to move to more productive industrial activities. |