This is the final report of the Asian Development Bank Institute study Connecting Central Asia with Economic Centers. The study focuses on the five Central Asian economies: Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The aim of the study is to examine the pattern of economic relations between these economies and major economic centers since Central Asia began its transition to a market economy in the early 1990s, highlighting emerging challenges and exploring their policy implications along the way. The report considers trade ties, foreign direct investment and financial flows, migration and remittances, and institutional cooperation between the Central Asian economies and major economic centers such as those in Asia, the European Union, the Russian Federation, and the United States.

During the 1990s, the governments of South Asian countries acted as ‘facilitators’ to attract FDI. As a result, the inflow of FDI increased. However, to become an attractive FDI destination as China, Singapore, or Brazil, South Asia has to improve the local conditions of doing business. This book, based on research that blends theory, empirical evidence, and policy, asks and attempts to answer a few core questions relevant to FDI policy in South Asian countries: Which major reforms have succeeded? What are the factors that influence FDI inflows? What has been the impact of FDI on macroeconomic performance? Which policy priorities/reforms needed to boost FDI are pending? These questions and answers should interest policy makers, academics, and all those interested in FDI in the South Asian region and in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

This book analyzes the Central Asian economies of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, from their buffeting by the commodity boom of the early 2000s to its collapse in 2014. Richard Pomfret examines the countries’ relations with external powers and the possibilities for development offered by infrastructure projects as well as rail links between China and Europe. The transition of these nations from centrally planned to market-based economic systems was essentially complete by the early 2000s, when the region experienced a massive increase in world prices for energy and mineral exports. This raised incomes in the main oil and gas exporters, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan; brought more benefits to the most populous country, Uzbekistan; and left the poorest countries, the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan, dependent on remittances from migrant workers in oil-rich Russia and Kazakhstan. Pomfret considers the enhanced role of the Central Asian nations in the global economy and their varied ties to China, the European Union, Russia, and the United States. With improved infrastructure and connectivity between China and Europe (reflected in regular rail freight services since 2011 and China’s announcement of its Belt and Road Initiative in 2013), relaxation of United Nations sanctions against Iran in 2016, and the change in Uzbekistan’s presidency in late 2016, a window of opportunity appears to have opened for Central Asian countries to achieve more sustainable economic futures.

China¿s Belt and Road (BRI) Initiative was announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in September 2013 at Nazarbayev University. It is therefore natural that, for its launch, the NAC-NU Central Asia Studies Program, in partnership with GW¿s Central Asia Program, seeks to disentangle the puzzle of the BRI Initiative and its impact on Central Asia. Selected from over 130 proposals, the papers brought together here offer a complex and nuanced analysis of China¿s New Silk Road project: its aims, the challenges facing it, and its reception in Central Asia. Combining methodological and theoretical approaches drawn from disciplines as varied as economics and sociology, and operating at both micro and macro levels, this collection of papers provides the most up-to-date research on China¿s BRI in Central Asia. It also represents the first step toward the creation of a new research hub at Nazarbayev University, aiming to forge new bonds between junior, mid-career, and senior scholars who hail from different regions of the world and belong to different intellectual traditions.

This book examines how foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to Central and Eastern Europe have changed after the Great Recession. It argues that beyond their cyclical effects, the economic crisis and the changing competitiveness of Central and Eastern European countries have had structural impacts on FDI in the region. FDI has traditionally been viewed as the key driver of national development, but the apparent structural shift means that focusing on cheap labour as a competitive advantage is no longer a viable strategy for the countries in the region. The authors argue that these countries need to move beyond the narrative of upgrading (attracting FDI inflows with increasingly higher value added), and focus on ensuring greater value capture instead. A potential way for doing this is by developing the conditions in which innovative national companies can emerge, thrive and eventually develop into lead firms of global value chains. The book provides readers with a highly informative account of the reasons why this shift is necessary, as well as diverse perspectives and extensive discussions on the dynamics and structural impacts of FDI in post-crisis Central and Eastern Europe.

"In July 2007, the European Union initiated a fundamentally new approach to the countries of Central Asia. The launch of the EU Strategy for Central Asia signals a qualitative shift in the Union's relations with a region of the world that is of growing importance as a supplier of energy, is geographically situated in a politically sensitive area - between China, Russia, Iran, Afghanistan and the south Caucasus - and contains some of the most authoritarian political regimes in the world. In this volume, leading specialists from Europe, the United States and Central Asia explore the key challenges facing the European Union as it seeks to balance its policies between enhancing the Union's energy, business and security interests in the region while strengthening social justice, democratisation efforts and the protection of human rights. With chapters devoted to the Union's bilateral relations with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan and to the vital issues of security and democratisation, 'Engaging Central Asia' provides the first comprehensive analysis of the EU's strategic initiative in a part of the world that is fast emerging as one of the key regions of the 21st century."--BOOK JACKET.