Central Asia Reels at Russian Ban on Traders

A Russian government ban on foreign nationals working as traders has alarming implications for the Central Asian states, and also for Russia’s own labour market, NBCentralAsia analysts argue.



Russia will enforce a quota on labour migration from January 1, and two weeks later a law will come into force requiring a register to be kept of foreign nationals and stateless persons who count as migrants. This latter law is intended to prevent migrant workers from working in the retail trade sector, especially from selling pharmaceuticals and alcohol.



A Russian embassy spokesman in Tajikistan explained that the change was intended to “reduce the number of intermediary traders at the markets, and protect the interests of Russian manufacturers”.



NBCentralAsia analysts are pessimistic about the implications of Moscow’s decision. Surat Ikramov, for instance, an Uzbekistan-based human rights activist, believes the restrictions can only make life more difficult for the more than two million Uzbek labour migrants in Russia. Their incomplete knowledge of Russian and ignorance of the law has already left many of them effectively without human rights, he said.



Aigul Ryskulova, who heads the Kyrgyz government’s Migration and Employment Committee, believe the various Central Asian republics will be greatly concerned at the Russian decision, since they are ill-prepared to reintegrate large numbers of ex-migrants.



“There is no effective provision in place for the eventuality that they would come home,” she said. “There’s little our government could offer them since domestic unemployment is high.”



Ryskulova told NBCentralAsia that her committee is sending a delegation to Moscow to discuss the position of Kyrgyz migrants, of whom there are an estimated 500,000 in Russia.



Hojimahmad Umarov, a Tajikistan-based expert on economics and labour migration, thinks Russia itself is ill-prepared to cope with the consequences of the new restrictions, since it is the retail sector, together with the construction industry, that need foreign labour the most.



“It’s a poor decision for a country like Russia where the demographics show a population falling by a million people a year,” Umarov says. “For decades now the retail market has been dominated not by Russians but by others - Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Tajiks and Uzbeks. I doubt Russians are suddenly going to take up market trading.”



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)