New economic outlines of Turkmenistan defined by business parks and industrial clusters
Residents of Turkmenistan are familiar with this feeling: after a relatively short period of time when visiting any of the corners of Ashgabat or flying other cities in the country, you do not recognize the usual city layout and landscapes. Here and there, appear new multi-storey residential "white marbles", respectable offices, medical institutions, cultural, sports facilities and entire industrial zones.
New facilities often represent not individual buildings, but complexes of buildings that functionally complement each other. Residential houses are accompanied by shops, schools and kindergartens, administrative centers - by car parks and new urban transport routes, etc. etc. So the housewarming party is also complex: adults are happy with new apartments or cottages, teenagers are playing on new football fields in training parks in walking distance, and the kids are celebrating new playgrounds.
Cities and villages are now being built up by whole streets and blocks - "queues". Not those that are so familiar to representatives of the older generation who had to stand for hours in the crowd for a good book, sausage or more or less decent clothes. "Queue" is now a concept, meaning a newly arranged space of life.
In Ashgabat, one such queue follows another: it seemed, not so long ago, the entire people celebrated the 14th phase. Did not have time to get used to it, as we launched the 15th one. While it was settled, the 16th queue of the construction of the Turkmen capital was already planned. The speeds of renewal are, indeed, cosmic and previously unprecedented.
The middle of February was marked by the commissioning of two large facilities. Although the first "object" is called so very conditionally - after all, it is about a hundred of very impressive buildings with equipped shopping areas and equipped office space. This is an investment project of local businessmen united under the roof of the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, which significantly strengthened their already considerable potential.
The second "commissioned" facility is a large glass production plant. The xonstruction began a couple of years ago. And that's why. Large-scale construction forces the purchase of huge volumes of glass abroad. Now Turkmen builders will purchase it in their own, domestic market, which will reduce the price of the construction objects they build to certain limits.
And not only this. At today's opening, a wide range of products produced by the same Turkmen entrepreneurs - from building materials, luxury furniture and industrial refrigeration systems to children's diapers and napkins, was presented in the new luxury stores. All this had until recently to be imported, losing huge amounts of gold and foreign exchange reserves.
Take the glass factory, which entered the industrial cluster, formed in the Ahal province. Occupying an area of 24 hectares, it is already an important object of industrial significance, which has no analogues in the Central Asian region. The enterprise is able to fully cover the country's needs for glass products and has the highest export potential.
The complex will produce sheet glass of various thicknesses, as well as glass vessels of all shapes and sizes made from domestic raw materials. Having provided work to hundreds of residents of the country, many of whom have received a special education abroad as part of the construction contract, the facility will produce more than 70,000 tons of glass and over 14,000 tons of bottled products per year.
Programs to increase the production of import-substituting items have created conditions for accelerating the industrialization of Turkmenistan. Due to this, the country's natural resources cease to be raw materials for deliveries abroad, being used in domestic enterprises, and turning into goods with high added value, the export of which diversifies the country's economy.
Against the background of the accelerated pace of industrialization in Turkmenistan, the share of the private sector is increasing. According to Goskomstat, in 2017 retail trade in the country was 92.5% carried out by entrepreneurs. A significant part of the construction and installation work in the country is also carried out by private Turkmen firms, which have almost supplanted foreign companies in this market.
The number of entrepreneurs, private firms and individual enterprises is constantly growing. And all of them need office, representative and trade areas. The UIET responded to this demand by constructing a new business district in the north of Ashgabat, where 97 multifunctional buildings are built, "turnkey".
The new district will become a focus of innovative entrepreneurship, where business projects will be born, business negotiations with foreign partners will be conducted. In this business park there are premises for small individual enterprises and large companies with a huge number of employees, but each office, despite its size and purpose, has the widest functionality and aesthetic interior design.
