Economic Development Strategies of Major Central Asian Countries and Their Implications for Korea

Abstract

Amid global economic uncertainties arising from prolonged oil prices, China’s economic slowdown, and increased protectionist US trade policies, the Central Asian governments are developing and pursuing individual eco-nomic development strategies which reflect their own socio-economic characteristics and key policy goals. Central Asia’s three resource-rich countries, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, have several common obstacles threatening further economic growth: inadequate transpor-tation and logistics networks due to land-locked locations, high dependency on primary commodity exports, among others. Thus their economic development strategies aim to pro-mote economic diversification for sustainable growth. The purpose of this study is to focus on Ka-zakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, ana-lyzing the new economic development strate-gies of these countries, and to discover oppor-tunities and demand for economic cooperation.