More news is emerging of a catastrophic bread shortage plaguing numerous regions around Turkmenistan. This obviously comes as a surprise after the bumper grain harvest that had been announced earlier this year. Optimism was riding so high that in October this year President Saparmurat Niyazov could venture that not only would no grain be imported (this was, in fact, forbidden), but that surplus harvest would be sold on to second parties. Such a situation was allegedly the fruit of a policy to make Turkmenistan independent of import requirements. Even in October, sources within Turkmenistan were casting doubt on the veracity of official grain figures, suggesting they had been exaggerated three-fold. A comment to Deutsche Welle from an anonymous official at an association of grain supplier provided more concrete data on the scale of the deception:

“Niyazov said that we had produced over two million tons of grain. That is completely inaccurate. This country has never produced any more than 500-600 thousand tons of grain. We don’t even have the storehouses to contain such an enormous amount of grain. For some reason, most likely political and economic, we have ceased to import grain from the biggest producers - Iran, Ukraine, Kazakhstan - and as a result the storehouses we do have are now empty. In 1996, when we were in danger of famine, we were assisted by the then president of Iran Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani; he sent us flour and grain, and for that Niyazov called him his brother. Who our brother is going to be this is not yet clear.”

Thus it is becoming steadily apparent that Niyazov was right when he suggested to Rossiiskaya Gazeta that the country had progressed from the days when the “people of the country lined up in queues for a loaf of bread.” Unfortunately, that is only because bread is being sucked off the shelves so quickly in the Mary, Lebap and Dashoguz velyats that availability is being seriously compromise. Moreover, the little bread which can be found is reported to be of very low quality.
There are no indications that the Turkmen government has any intention to reverse its import ban, but some acknowledgement of the problem has been signalled by a presidential decree allocating $10 million to the upgrading of water supply facilities in, wait for it, the Mary, Lebap, Dashoguz and Akhal velyats, some of those areas worst affected by the bread crisis*. Niyazov callled for the Water Industry Ministry to organise a tender for foreign companies to supply required hardware and spare parts. The Ministry is also to be charged with administering the distribution of imported equipment to the regions. This indicates some degree of distrust of regional administrators, most prominently displayed by the recent dismissal and arrest of the chiefs of the Dashoguz and Balkan velyats. So with too little, being done badly and too late, the future looks none too promising.

* The English translation of the story at Turkmenistan.ru lists different velyats from those in the Russian version. Where the English version lists Balkan, the Russian article substitutes it for Akhal. The detail is not superficial, as if both the velyats are going to be included in the initiative the investment will be diluted down from the already paltry $2.5 million to $2 million.