Regional MARKETS
Regional Markets Focus on: Central Asia
Central Asia as a region is stabilising in political activity and has important natural resources that are being developed or will be developed in coming years. Ahead of its launch of a new series of country reports on the region, gasworld reports on the activity and potential for the region.
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uch of Central Asia formed part of the mighty Soviet Union up until 1990/1. Covering a land mass of approximately 4.7 million square kilometres and having a combined population of 95 million people (2011), the region often suffered from dictatorships, rigid state control, border disputes, poverty, ethnic violence, lack of investment, and a general breakdown in infrastructure during a fraught decade in the 1990s. However, following the example shown in Kazakhstan, by far the largest economy and land mass in Central Asia, the various 54
countries are stabilising somewhat and are opening up to investment, privatisation, and are encouraging exploration and processing of some of the natural resources that exist. In fact, some such as Uzbekistan are marketing themselves as an interesting new tourism destination. The combined regional GDP amounted to some US$235bn in 2011, but wealth varied across the zone. Kazakhstan is the wealthiest in terms of US$ per capita GDP, with an average in 2011 of greater than US$9,000 per Capita compared with the poorest country, Tajikistan, which measured
an average US$950 per capita. Clearly, sandwiched between the Russian Federation, China and the Middle East/Asia, there are significant oil and natural gas reserves in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, as well as large coal reserves in Uzbekistan. On the other hand, some of the countries have mineral ores and precious metals which has resulted in an established steel industry in Kazakhstan and gold, silver and Uranium extraction in Tajikistan. So what does this mean for the demand for industrial gases, and what does the www.gasworld.com/regionalmarkets