Kyrgyz President Sadyr Zhaparov Champions Reform at World Government Summit

The full text of his address to the summit is as follows:

Your Highnesses,

Your Excellencies,

Esteemed Heads of State and Government,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Assalamu alaikum va rahmatullahi va barakatuhu!

I am pleased to address the 10th annual World Government Summit.

First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the President of the United Arab Emirates, His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan for his kind invitation to participate in this important gathering.

Within a decade from its founding, the Summit has become an effective platform for global dialogue on many issues of concern to humanity and an opportunity to share the experience in the area of public administration, to improve government efficiency, quality of people's life and reduction of poverty.

The Middle East region was a true cradle for the birth of high civilizations, scientific discoveries, genius inventions and unique ideas that enriched the world's treasury of knowledge.

A galaxy of brilliant minds of the Ummah Golden era such as Ar-Razi, Al-Tabari, Al-Bukhari, Al-Farabi, Al-Khorezmi, Al-Biruni, ibn Sina, ibn Khaldun and many other great personalities made their invaluable contribution to the development of humankind.

Dear participants,

It is a great honour for me to address and with you our vision on further development of Kyrgyzstan.

Since we gained our independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the country has gone through many tests.

We tried to go with various national practices of other states, gone with numerous “recipes” of governance - from a presidential till parliamentary structures, and finally went back to a presidential form of governance.

Of course, all these changes did reflect the aspirations and hopes of our people, its desire to find the optimal path of state-building and to achieve the goals of sustainable political and economic development.

When I took the office in 2020, the country, which is initially landlocked with 94% of landscape covered by high mountains, has gone through three revolutions, a number of social upheavals, in a deep economic crisis aggravated by the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. Moreover, Kyrgyzstan, which had enormous energy potential and natural resources, was totally unable to gain benefits from its own wealth.

So, I set for myself a primary purpose to ensure the prosperity and well-being of my people.

To do this, I outlined the following priority tasks:

First. The modernization of the entire system of the executive power, the transformation of the Government's work.

According to the Constitution of our country, I am personally heading the state's executive branch.

The Government must serve the interests of the people, create a favorable environment for people's spiritual and intellectual, economic and social growth and must provide high-quality public services.

In order to achieve this goal, first of all it was necessary to improve the process of decision-making.

Before I came to the power, the President and the Prime Minister had their own administrations, with their own often opposite ambitions and visions.

Sometimes these two administrations shifted to each other the responsibility for making an important decision.

As a result, this led to the delays, and problems were accumulated over the years and remained unresolved.

In this regard, we have decided to combine the two administrations into one Presidential Administration, which currently coordinates the entire executive branch in the country. The Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers simultaneously heads the Presidential Administration.

Thus, we have concentrated the entire process of making and executing government decisions in one place.

These measures have improved the effectiveness of the Government of our country as a whole and consolidated the power vertical.

Second. An uncompromising fight against corruption.

Unfortunately, this social evil has been and still remains as one of the major causes of deep turmoil in the country.

In order to eradicate it, especially in the economic sphere, the Cabinet of Ministers is actively working to bring the economy out of the shadows, as part of a program to introduce new tax administration tools.

In the course of the fight against corruption and auditing the expenditure of budgetary funds, large funds have been returned to the state.

Despite the fact that no new taxes were introduced, the improvement in tax administration led to the state budget growth to almost a third last year.

Third. The New Economic Policy.

The national economy is developing at a steady pace in Kyrgyzstan.

Economic growth over the past three years has averaged almost 7% (2021 – 5.5%, 2022 – 9%, 2023 – 6.2%).

Major infrastructure and international projects with the participation of foreign investors are being implemented, including the construction of hydroelectric power plants, road construction, airport modernization, etc.

We want to make Kyrgyzstan a regional "business oasis" with an attractive investment climate, a liberal foreign trade policy, and an open and credulous business environment.

I would like to emphasize once again that Kyrgyzstan is always open to investors and partners.

Our new economic policy will be based primarily on three key areas: energy, mining and transport and transit industries.

We want to properly benefit from the country's main natural wealth – energy resources.

Kyrgyzstan has significant industrial potential in terms of reserves of hydropower resources, which are estimated at about 142 billion kilowatt-hours.

We firmly believe that these resources should serve the people.

When I became the head of state, 10% of the whole water resources potential was used. As of today, 13% has already been developed, and we are aiming to intensify this work.

We welcome the participation of foreign investors and are very pleased that renowned Emirati company Masdar has expressed its firm intention to work in our country.

I would like to note here that as part of my participation in the successfully held UN climate conference COP-28, a trilateral memorandum was signed between Masdar, Electricité de France and Kyrgyzstan for the implementation of projects in the field of green energy in the amount of 3.5 Gigawatts.

We have started the implementation of the project for the construction of the Kambar-Ata HPP-1, with a design capacity of 1.8 Gigawatts.

50 small and medium-sized hydroelectric power plants are under construction, as well as projects in the field of renewable energy sources.

In the interests of developing transport and logistics potential and entering world markets, we are launching the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway construction project, which will connect Asian countries through Central Asia with the Middle East, South Asia, Africa and Europe.

Fourth. Digitalization of the entire system of public services provided to the population.

The system of public administration, which had become cumbersome and inert over the past ten years, needed decisive measures.

We have taken these steps through the introduction of digitalization.

We have launched the national project "Tündük", which is a system of electronic interdepartmental interaction.

The results pleasantly surprised us.

The efficiency of public administration has increased sharply, the pace of interdepartmental coordination has accelerated, and the corruption component has decreased.

Of course, we thoroughly learn the best practices and experience of our foreign partners.

Here I would like to mention the Emirati program "Government Accelerators", the implementation of which in Kyrgyzstan has already yielded positive results and received the most positive responses among our population.

We really liked this idea and, in March last year, the Government officially launched this project.

Our civil servants received the necessary training in the Emirates and within 100 days we were able to identify and resolve three problematic tasks of a social nature.

I am pleased to note the success of this project.

We intend to start implementing the second phase of the program in the near future together with our Emirati friends.

Dear friends,

Artificial intelligence provides huge opportunities to improve people's quality of life if used correctly.

We have recently successfully tested our own artificial intelligence model in the Kyrgyz language, trained based on our culture, knowledge, traditions and ethics.

I believe that the special value and relevance of artificial intelligence will be that it includes the diversity of traditions and values of all humankind.

Taking advantage of the fact that Mr. Sam Altman, the creator of ChatGPT, is with us, I would like to note our willingness to provide a text corpus and the accumulated knowledge of our people.

High–quality education is the foundation for the progress and development of any country.

We allocate 20% of our national income to education. We must adequately respond to the challenge of transforming the educational sector.

Dear participants of the Summit,

By carrying out these reforms in Kyrgyzstan, we have not deviated one step from the basic principles of democracy.

And in this context, we, like the fraternal Arab peoples, have been using a system of building direct dialogue and interaction between the government and the people since time immemorial.

In particular, we have revived the traditional public institution "Kurultai". This is a meeting where representatives of the people gather to discuss important issues, make decisions and maintain public harmony.

The tradition of collective consultation and direct communication has many similarities with the Majlis Institute in the Emirates and other Arab countries.

The Cabinet of Ministers presents an account to the delegates of the Kurultai on the effectiveness of its work.

At the same time, I would like to emphasize that the Kurultai does not replace the role of the country's national parliament, the Jogorku Kenesh of the Kyrgyz Republic.

The wishes and mandates of the people become a kind of guidelines to the executive branch.

Public policy is focused on the individual and his needs.

According to the Sustainable Development Goals implementation, we have been rated the 45th in the world among the 166 countries.

We intend to be among the top 30 countries in the SDG implementation by 2030.

Our compatriots are already feeling the changes for the better, who cherish hope for a better future and confidence in the future.

Dear participants of the Summit,

In today's rapidly changing international situation, challenges and threats have long gone beyond national borders.

Whether it's climate change, terrorism, extremism, or energy and food security issues.

In this regard, consolidation of joint efforts and our collective response are necessary to find effective solutions.

During the period of turbulence, Kyrgyzstan is looking for its own development path, looks for cooperation with interested partners and strives to provide a decent standard of living for its people.

We are deeply concerned about the ongoing events in certain parts of the world, which negatively affect regional and international stability and security, as well as the global economy.

In conclusion, I would like to note that the role and importance of the World Government Summit will only increase year by year.

I would like to wish fruitful discussions and great success to the guests and participants of the Summit.

Thank you for your attention.