Uzbekistan: Rising Income Claims Unrealistic
Sunday, 7 December, 2008
Uzbekistan: Rising Income Claims Unrealistic
Sunday, 7 December, 2008
In late November, state media published data released by the Ministry of Finance and the State Statistical Committee, according to which per capita incomes have increased by almost 25 per cent compared with 2007. The average monthly wage increased by 50 per cent to reach almost 300,000 soms, or 220 US dollars.
Local observers dispute these figures, saying there has been no real increase in public-sector wages. Teachers and doctors, in particular, are among the poorest-paid people in the country.
A secondary school teacher in the Jizak region of central Uzbekistan with 28 years in the job behind her says wages have remained constant for some years now. Primary school teachers earn 44 dollars a month, while high school teachers earn around 88 dollars.
“Those wages [claimed in government report] don’t exist in the secondary schools,” she said.
Other employees in the public sector reported a similar situation. For example, a post office clerk earns around 40 dollars a month, while a qualified doctor at a district health centre will get around 74 dollars.
Some economists believe the high income levels claimed by the authorities have been produced by using data only from the private sector, where some banks, trading firms and other companies pay well.
“The managers of these institutions can raise wages at their own discretion,” said Kamron Aliev, an economist from Uzbekistan. “I think the authorities were referring to these organisations when they cited these figures.”
Other experts says that even if this is the case, figures from the private sector account for only 40 per cent of the total number of employed, and are therefore not enough to bump up the statistical average income.
The claims appear, therefore, to be a fiction designed to show rising prosperity levels.
According to Tashpulat Yoldashev, an Uzbek political analyst now living abroad, “If the authorities said they’d raised the average wage by four per cent, that would be something tangible and credible.”
(NBCentralAsia is an IWPR-funded project to create a multilingual news analysis and comment service for Central Asia, drawing on the expertise of a broad range of political observers across the region. The project ran from August 2006 to September 2007, covering all five regional states. With new funding, the service is resuming, covering Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.)
