ABSTRACT
Chapter 8 focuses on various entrepreneurs in Kyrgyzstan’s light manufacturing and agricultural sector to explore their adjustments since the country entered into the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) in 2015. Examining the establishment of a paper factory and a textile company demonstrates that a new financial instrument associated with the EAEU, the so-called Russian-Kyrgyz Development Fund (RKDF), enabled Kyrgyzstani entrepreneurs to upgrade their positions in regional value chains and to decrease the country’s import dependency. It also exhibited an emergent demand for business service providers, such as designers, consultants or public relations experts. Furthermore, the chapter points out that exposure to a single market with competition from larger producers in Qazaqstan or Russia was weighing comparatively heavier on Kyrgyzstani agri-businesses, which suffered from this sector’s post-Soviet fragmentation into mainly under-capitalized small-scale and subsistence farming ventures. Compliance with recently established EAEU-wide hygiene and other standards proved a time- and cost-intensive affair for agricultural entrepreneurs, which added to their more general critique about governmental neglect.
