Resource information
The study reviews the living standards
in Turkmenistan, shaped by the Soviet legacy - whose income
levels in 1989 were below the socially acceptable minimum -;
by the economic decline throughout the 1990s, until recent
economic resumption; and, by current approaches, and
government policies. In an attempt to ensure good living
standards, the country maintained one of the highest levels
of subsidization of basic goods: water, gas, fuel, and
social services, are mostly free. To some extent, the poor
do benefit from these subsidies, but troubling issues reveal
that: the costs of these non-targeted subsidies are not
transparent, because they are paid by the providing agency,
which in turn receives subsidized inputs. Nonetheless, real
costs make it impossible to operate on a commercial basis,
and, the non-payment system as it relates to maintenance and
operation, has led to poor quality of services. But poverty
alleviation implies much more than just subsidies, for
measured in access to opportunity, it is seriously limited:
few mechanisms exist for enabling the poor to benefit from
most of the country's energy export earnings. Based on
evidence that funding for social services represent
transparent expenditures, and that subsidized commodities
are disproportionately benefiting the wealthy, the potential
for commercialization is undermined, unless services move to
market pricing standards.
