GlobalSource Partners | Country Insights

Evaluating the medium-term government programs in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan has brought into sharper focus the very high growth rates in these economies, with neighboring Kyrgyzstan comfortably beating even those ambitious 7-8% plus growth projections. A question that I have posed for myself in r...

TOPIC OF THE WEEK: Non-gold exports put a floor under the Uzbek som

CAUCASUS / CENTRAL ASIA · Report · 04 Sep 2026

My readers know that I prefer to look at FX developments in the CCA region chiefly through the prism of the Russian RUB. I have repeatedly argued that this provides the best first-order approximation of the various other relevant factors affecting currency behavior in the region. This time around...

TOPIC OF THE WEEK: Tajikistan's high-octane growth bet

CAUCASUS / CENTRAL ASIA · Report · 28 Aug 2026

Continuing in the vein of my analyses of medium-term frameworks, I follow on the Uzbekistan's 2027-2029 Fiscal Strategy and now dissect the medium-term macroeconomic framework presented by the Tajik government on Jul 29. Without a doubt, it comes across as an ambitious high-growth scenario cente...

TOPIC OF THE WEEK: Uzbekistan’s fiscal reset gains traction

CAUCASUS / CENTRAL ASIA · Report · 21 Aug 2026

I have in the last two weeks combed through the almost 200-page 2027-2029 Fiscal Strategy (in Uzbek only) released by the Uzbek Ministry of Economy and Finance. It has been a laborious, yet worthwhile exercise. My key takeaway is that Uzbekistan is turning fiscal discipline from a one-off cor...

TOPIC OF THE WEEK: Pashinyan’s referendum traps—heads he loses, tails he loses more

CAUCASUS / CENTRAL ASIA · Report · 07 Aug 2026

Armenia’s newly elected National Assembly convened this week following the disputed June 7 vote. As expected, the opposition took its seats, perhaps mindful of the limited gains delivered by the Georgian opposition’s parliamentary boycott. Alongside mounting pressure from Russian trade restric...

TOPIC OF THE WEEK: Uzbekistan's fiscal strategy 2027-2029 sees no FX drama

CAUCASUS / CENTRAL ASIA · Report · 31 Jul 2026

The Uzbek sum is set to bend, not break. This is how the new 2027-2029 Fiscal Strategy sees the UZS—no FX cliff, but a slow, controlled crawl. This makes Tashkent’s FX outlook almost boring, and that is the bullish part. Uzbekistan’s new 2027–2029 Fiscal Strategy no longer publishes an explici...

TOPIC OF THE WEEK: The Kyrgyz som looks vulnerable, but the trade may be early rather than wrong

CAUCASUS / CENTRAL ASIA · Report · 24 Jul 2026

The Kyrgyz som is being held on an exceptionally tight leash. The central bank has sold almost US$1.5bn through nine interventions in 2026—already far above the full-year total for 2025—yet the USDKGS has barely moved from 87.45. At this point, the policy looks increasingly like defense of a leve...

Remittance riches shore up Tajikistan’s external accounts

CAUCASUS / CENTRAL ASIA · In Brief · 16 Jul 2026

Tajikistan external story is probably the simplest as the BoP is heavily dominated by remittances from Russia. Tajikistan is the last in the short series on the external accounts of the CCA economies, and it is arguably the most straightforward of all. It has been posting CA surpluses since mid-2...

Uzbekistan's BoP suffers the pinch of gold, albeit with a caveat

CAUCASUS / CENTRAL ASIA · In Brief · 15 Jul 2026

The CA deficit has widened significantly on lack of gold exports. Uzbekistan had enjoyed a stream of steadily improving external accounts over 2024/2025 as the CA deficit narrowed from the peak of 8.0 percent of GDP in 1Q24 (on a 12mma basis) to the trough of only 1.9 percent of GDP in 3Q25 (Grap...

Georgia is riding an FX wave to its smallest current-account deficit ever

CAUCASUS / CENTRAL ASIA · In Brief · 14 Jul 2026

Georgia's external story has its own defining characteristics, centered around the steady inflow of foreign exchange in the face of complex political relations with the West. The CA registered a deficit of US$356.0mn in 1Q26 on the back of the US$631.1mn deficit posted in 1Q25 and the US$482.5mn ...

Azerbaijan's external accounts come with an increasingly large SOFAZ asterisk

CAUCASUS / CENTRAL ASIA · In Brief · 13 Jul 2026

Azerbaijan comes second in my analysis of the external accounts in the CCA region and the improvement it saw in its CA position in 1Q26 was not for the reason one may have anticipated. The CA surplus improved to 9.5 percent of GDP in the quarter from 2.4 percent of GDP in 4Q25 and 6.5 percent of ...

Geopolitical tailwinds lift Armenia’s external accounts

CAUCASUS / CENTRAL ASIA · In Brief · 10 Jul 2026

While Kyrgyzstan reported its full-year 2025 BoP data only last week, the rest of the CCA region already released their external accounts for the first quarter of 2026 over the course of the past week. I generally prefer to comment on them in a single post, but this time around I have decided to ...

Topic of the week: 2Q 2026 Slide deck

CAUCASUS / CENTRAL ASIA · Presentation · 02 Jul 2026

This is the quarterly slide deck for 2Q26 for the Caucasus and Central Asia, comprising a 206-slide detailed description of the economic status quo in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It covers various topics, including growth, economic structure, inflation, ra...

Kyrgyzstan has yet to convincingly rein in opaque trade flows

CAUCASUS / CENTRAL ASIA · In Brief · 26 Jun 2026 · 1 response

I must admit that I have a soft spot for Kyrgyzstan's BoP data. It is probably the most exciting set of external flows from an analytical perspective in my CCA region and a treasury trove for drawing conclusions about Bishkek's efforts to clamp down on opaque trade with Russia. The analysis is, o...

TOPIC OF THE WEEK: Opposition cross-pollination in the South Caucasus—Armenia and Georgia exchanging lessons from the political battlefield

CAUCASUS / CENTRAL ASIA · Report · 25 Jun 2026

Two key events have taken place in the Armenian and Georgian political fields these days. In the former, I see no surprises coming from tomorrow's Constitutional Court decision on the validity of the elections as the Court will rubber stamp Pashinyan's victory. The really interesting debate th...