ABSTRACT
In Soviet times, Central Asia specialized in agriculture and heavy industries, and had a very limited industrial base apart from extraction. A few light industries operated as links in a larger chain of production that often began and ended in European Russia, Siberia, or Ukraine, but most finished products arrived-in small amounts-from other republics. This entire industrial base collapsed in the first half of the 1990s, due to the disappearance of linkages between republics, the unprofitability of factories, and the opening up to foreign markets. Even Kazakhstan was unable to safeguard the majority of its light industries. The industrial base is therefore structurally weak in Central Asia, and helpless when faced with competition from China, which supplies all kinds of products at ultra-competitive prices. However, some industrial niches did survive or have been reconstituted: chemical and pharmaceutical industries are attempting to modernize; Russia has revived the military-industrial complex; the automobile sector, one of the region’s last remaining mechanical industries, has taken off in Uzbekistan; the textile sector is developing, with more success in Turkmenistan than in Uzbekistan; the construction market is going through an unprecedented boom; and the food processing and distribution sectors are restructuring.
