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Shortages have broken the link between connection to the grid and access acc to reliable electricity supplies.. Until 2008, quasi quasi-universal universal household connections to Kyrgyzstan’s electricity grid meant quasi quasi-universal universal access to electricity services. However, the winter energy crisis in that year led to a sharp increase in the fre frequency quency of service interruptions: nearly half of Kyrgyzstan’s households reported electricity outages on a daily basis; while 70 percent reported several such service interruptions per week. While the situation has improved since then, service outages conti continue.
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Low-income income households, and especially households in rural and mountainous areas, are most likely to be affected by interruptions in electricity supplies. supplies As these households’ rely on electricity for heat as well as lighting, these data underscore the severity of the recent winter hardships experienced.
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Kyrgyzstani households seem to pay more for electricity and gas than billing information suggests. While this discrepancy can be explained in various ways, corruptive collusion among households and bill collectors may be responsible. This apparent “corruption tax” seems to be a particularly heavy burden on low-income low households.
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Only about half of Kyrgyzstan’s gyzstan’s social benefits are received by low-income income households. This share actually dropped slightly during 2009 2009-2010 (to 50 percent, down from 52 percent in 2008). By contrast, the share of social benefits accruing to upper-income upper households more than do doubled (from 6 to 13 percent) during 2008-2010. 2010. Much of the increased social spending in response to the crisis developments of 2009-2010— 2009 significant shares of which were financed by donors donors—seems seems to have leaked to relatively wealthy households. Kyrgyzstan’s social protection system seems to have become less able to direct benefits to the most needy households. This has implications for the system’s ability to protect vulnerable households from possible future increases in energy prices as well.
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The simplification cation and monetization of categorical benefits introduced in 2010 seems to have deepened the regressive character of Kyrgyzstan’s social policy framework. The share of categorical benefits benefits—including including subsidies for energy and communal services— services received by low-income income households dropped from 46 percent in 2009 to only 20 percent during the first half of 2010. (This share had been at 65 percent in 2008.) By contrast, the share of categorical benefits accruing to upper upper-income income households rose from 11 to 38 percentt during this time. Likewise, the share of the monthly social benefits (accruing primarily to people with disabilities, to households that have lost a breadwinner, and to retirees not receiving old old-age pensions) going to low-income income households dropped from 57 percent in 2008 to only 12 percent during the first half of 2010. These trends question the rationale for considering the monthly social benefit to be an instrument for poverty reduction.
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