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    23.01.2014

    Minchenko Consluting presents the report "ASSESSMENT OF POLITICAL RISKS FOR FOREIGN INVESTORS IN CENTRAL ASIAN COUNTRIES: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS" in English

    The official English version of the report is ready for download

     

    In order to analyse the political risks for international investors in Central Asia for this survey, we have used previously published reports and related working papers, in particular expert questionnaires and a series of expert interviews, conducted as part of a range of country research projects of Minchenko Consulting Communications holding and its research division, – the International Institute for Political Expertise (IIPE). The report is also partially based upon the results and findings of a number of projects that featured one of co-authors of this report: project of the CSTO Analytical Association and MGIMO Analytical centre on the studies of political risks for Central Asian countries in relation to the ISAF troops withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014 , project of the Russian council on international affairs on the analysis of foreign aid to Central Asian countries . During the work on this comparative research, we have also organised consultations with leading experts on political risk analysis in Central Asia, in particular, in the Moscow State Institute for International Relations of Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MGIMO). The final analysis used data from international and Russian ratings , as well as international (UN bodies) and the national statistics of Central Asian countries on the volume and structure of investments in the region.

    Prior to our expert assessment, we would like to point out that in general political risks in Central Asia are viewed as very high by the Western expert community , falling short only to recognized "failed states", countries with political regimes not recognizing private property, certain unstable African countries etc. The problem with this approach is that such global reports compare Central Asian countries with the most attractive low-risk states such as developed Western countries or Southeast Asian “tigers”. The global span of such an approach to assessing political risks levels out differences between individual countries of Central Asia and loses the nuances inherent to the region’s specificity. Furthermore, such a global analysis is uninformative from the viewpoint of both foreign investors who want to invest money in this very region but pick a country or an investment target and from the viewpoint of respective states, since it is evident that automatic copying of Western or East Asian positive experience is difficult in Central Asian countries.

    Authors:

    Evgeny Minchenko, president of Minchenko Consulting communications group;
    Andrey Kazantsev, head of Center for Euro-Atlantic Security of Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO);
    Kirill Petrov, head of analytical department, Minchenko Consulting.

    The official English version of the report