Over-Intrusive Checks on Business to be Cut

A new presidential decree instructs Kyrgyz government agencies to stop carrying out unnecessary checks on businesses and generally interfering in their activities. Similar measures have proved ineffective in the past, and the government will have to show it is serious about making this one work.



President Kurmanbek Bakiev signed a decree on July 3 designed to streamline the process by which inspections are carried out on private companies, in the hope that with life made easier, businesses will beging to floursh. The government has been told to look at the functions of the different agencies empowered to carry out inspections, stop them duplicating one another, make their activity more transparent, reduce the overall number of checks and sort out the legislation in this area.



Talaybek Koychumanov, the secretary of the president’s Investment Council, says businesses in Kyrgyzstan were subjected to over 41,000 inspections last year.



“That’s more than one inspection per business per year. A great many of the inspections are conducted by different agencies but duplicate one another. Order must be imposed on this,” said Koychumanov.



Ruslan Sultanov, deputy head of Kyrgyzstan’s Enterprise Foundation, wants to see fewer inspections and fewer agencies with powers to carry them out.



“We do a lot of work a lot with entrepreneurs, and many of them complain that there are too many inspecting agencies,” he said.



However, this is not the first decree that aims to reduce inspections – a similar step was taken by former president Askar Akaev. According to Sapar Orozbakov, director of the Bishkek Centre for Economic Analysis, that decree was a washout.



“It isn’t about the sheer number of inspections, or the number of inspecting agencies – it’s about the authorities themselves. The problem is that we haven’t had reforms to improve the way the authorities operate,” he said, adding that it will take political as well as economic changes to turn Kyrgyzstan’s economy round.



By contast, Koychumanov believes the decree could be a success – provided the government is willing and able to take the steps needed to make that happen.



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