TURKMENISTAN: UNDP WORKS TO BUILD ANALYTIC SKILLS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ASHGABAT 001469

SIPDIS

STATE FOR SCA/CEN

E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/16/2019
TAGS: EAID ECON PGOV PREL SOCI UNDP TX
SUBJECT: TURKMENISTAN: UNDP WORKS TO BUILD ANALYTIC SKILLS
AMONG GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES

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Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Sylvia Reed Curran. Reasons 1.4 (B) a
nd (D).


1. (C) SUMMARY: A United Nations Development Program (UNDP)
project to develop analytic capacity among government
employees in Turkmenistan seems to be making progress toward
its goal of improving policy planning skills at the Institute
of Strategic Planning and Economic Development. In a
November 2-6 training seminar, government employees debated
topics of economic and social policy, including poverty
levels and the impact of the global economic crisis in the
region. That the Institute of Strategic Planning can call
the UN and admit that it needs help with its work shows the
level of trust that the Turkmen Government places in the UN.
END SUMMARY.


2. (SBU) The UNDP has been working with the Turkmenistan
Institute of Strategic Planning and Economic Development
since 2008 to build analytical and research capacity. The
"Economics of Transition" training during November 2-6 was
designed to stimulate thought and discussion among
participants on topics related to economic development.
According to Mary Risaeva, the program officer at UNDP
responsible for the analytic capacity building project, many
of the participants were from the Institute of Strategic
Planning, but there were also participants from the Ministry
of Finance, Ministry of Economics and Development, Ministry
of Energy Industry, Ministry of Nature Protection, and others.


3. (C) The Institute of Strategic Planning and Economic
Development is responsible for designing strategies for
socio-economic development in Turkmenistan. This includes
analyzing demographics, labor relations, monetary and tax
policy, and developing forecasts for the economy. In theory,
the Institute is accountable directly to the president, but
in practice it reports to the Deputy Chairman of the Cabinet
of Ministers for Economics and Finance. President
Berdimuhamedov in 2007 ordered the former Institute of
Information and State Statistics to be split into the
Strategic Planning Institute and the State Committee for
Statistics (Goskomstat, in Russian). The problem for the
employees who ended up at the Strategic Planning Institute
was that their experience was in data collection and
analysis. According to Risaeva, they had no experience doing
research for policy planning and approached the UN for help.
For instance, in 2008 Berdimuhamedov told the Institute to
work on plans to develop the private sector. Institute staff
immediately called Risaeva and asked for advice about how to
proceed. Incidents like these were part of the reason for
creating a program for analytic capacity development.


4. (C) Risaeva was pleased with the results of the seminar,
saying that it stimulated debates among the participants.
The topics that were the most hotly debated were levels of
poverty since Soviet times, social policies, and the global
economic crisis. Energy policy, by contrast, elicited less
discussion, possibly because most of the participants agreed
that the government should be responsible for natural
resources and dividing the profits. Risaeva noted that there
tended to be three camps of thought among participants:
pro-Soviet, pro-Turkmen, and pro-modern. The pro-Soviet
individuals approved of Soviet-era policies. When debating
levels of poverty, this group was unwilling to accept that,
as compared to world standards, the level of poverty in
Soviet Turkmenistan was as high as 70 percent. For the
pro-Turkmen people, it was difficult to admit any fault in
the current president's policies. The pro-modern group were
the ones looking for change.


5. (C) Risaeva said that although the seminar went well,
during the same week, a new director of the Institute of

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Strategic Planning was appointed. She described the new
director, who was the former Deputy Minister for Economics
and Development, as "very Soviet." He apparently wants to
reexamine all of the joint projects so that he can put his
own stamp on them. Risaeva noted how difficult this kind of
attitude made her work, but said that it was common that new
directors of institutions in Turkmenistan wanted to redo the
work of their predecessors. Projects are often viewed as
belonging to the individuals that signed them into effect,
not the institutions that participated.


6. (C) COMMENT: UNDP appears to have a very good relationship
with the Institute of Strategic Planning. The Institute's
request to Risaeva for help, along with similar experiences
of other UNDP staff, confirms that the Turkmen Government
views the UN as a trusted partner among donor organizations.
The same trust extends to very few other foreign
organizations in Turkmenistan. END COMMENT.
CURRAN