Turkmenistan’s participation in SGC will be a major element of diversification

Caspian Energy (CE):  Your Excellency, as a newly appointed diplomat, how would you assess the current economic relations of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and the dynamics of investment and trade relations of these countries with the EU, Baltic region and Latvia? 

Mihails Popkovs, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Latvian Republic to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan: In my opinion, the current state and prospects of development of economic relations between the Republic of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are closely associated with the changes which are generally taking place in the Central Asian region. 

In the last two years we have seen a positive dynamics and improvement of mutual cooperation between the region’s countries in the most different fields. It is an activation of the political dialogue between the leaders of the Central Asian states on a wide range of issues, and a rapid expansion of inter-regional economic and business contacts, border trade, humanitarian, cultural relations, etc. 

At the same time, we see an increasing willingness and a mutual desire to discuss constructively such sensitive issues, which for various reasons went underground during the long years, both in bilateral relations between the Central Asian countries and in the context of the regional cooperation. It, in particular, includes issues on bringing together efforts in ensuring regional security, coordination in the field of development of regional transport and logistics projects, issues of joint water management, delimitation and demarcation of certain segments of borders, activation of regional, trade cooperation, including border trade, environmental issues related to the Aral Sea problem and a number of other problems. 

It is important to note that these processes take place in the face of economic and administrative reforms implemented by the countries of the region. We are witnessing it particularly clearly in the case of the Republic of Uzbekistan where the public administration system is undergoing active reforming at the initiative of President S.Mirziyev, broad economic and social reforms are being implemented, a program of support for innovations and modern technologies has been declared. The European politicians and experts are, of course, monitoring all these trends. As a country which considers the relations with the Eastern Partnership and Central Asian states one of the priorities of its foreign policy, Latvia is closely following these processes, and we are pleased to note that these positive changes in the Central Asian region are already reflected not only in improvement of the general atmosphere of cooperation between the countries in the region but also in rapid growth of mutual trade. 

In the last year and a half, the trade growth between Uzbekistan and its neighbors, including Turkmenistan, has been a good example in this regard as the trade with neighbors is a powerful driver of the economic development, especially in the frontier regions. 

I would like to highlight that Latvia, which has broad experience in implementation of reforms, provided and keeps lending broad support through our experts and specialists to the Central Asian countries in a variety of areas such as higher and special education, integrated management of border security, administrative and communal reforms, use of green technologies, wastes processing and many more. 

These programmes are being implemented in the Central Asian countries both in bilateral basis and with funding from the European Union and other leading international organizations – United Nations Development Program (UNDP), US Agency for International Development (USAID) and a number of others.