The promise has a printed number. The state's standing order caps AI-92 in Kyrgyzstan at 79.9 som a litre and diesel at 93.9. On Thursday evening the head of the cabinet, Adylbek Kasymaliev, restated the goal behind it, ordering ministers to secure uninterrupted fuel supplies for a market that burns more than 1.5 million tonnes a year.
The pump answers differently. On Thursday a Bishkek price board read 87.80 for AI-92, the citywide survey ran to 87.90, and diesel stood at 99.90. The 86.90 this column counted on 7 August has become 87.90: the breach widened by a som in a fortnight.
Thursday also brought the cost of the gap into the open. By the Antimonopoly Regulation Service's accounting, published by 24.kg, a litre of AI-92 costs traders 111 to 118 som. Diesel costs 125 to 137. The budget compensates the difference between actual cost and the fixed retail price: 23.1 to 30.1 som on every litre of petrol, 25.1 to 37.1 on diesel. About 1 billion som, $11.4 million at the National Bank's 21 August rate, has already been paid out to fuel traders.
Now run the subtraction the disclosure invites. 111 minus 23.1 leaves 87.9. 118 minus 30.1 leaves 87.9. The service's own arithmetic anchors to a fixed retail price of 87.9 som, and 87.9 is the street price, 8 som above the printed ceiling of 79.9. The subsidy now defends the price the ceiling forbids.
One of two things is true. Either the ceiling was moved to 87.9 by a decision with a date and a number, in which case that order has not been published where a motorist can read it. Or the ceiling still stands at 79.9, in which case the state is subsidising a breach of its own order at up to 30.1 som a litre. There is no third reading, and neither of the two has a document attached.
If you filled a 40-litre tank in Bishkek on Thursday, you paid about 3,516 som at the pump, roughly $40. Behind you, the treasury quietly added up to 1,204 som more, another $14. The full price of your tank was never on the board.
The subsidy now defends the price the ceiling forbids.
The billion has not bought calm either. Stocks bought at the old prices are gradually running out, the oil traders' association said on Thursday, and a further rise is its expectation. The cabinet meeting is itself evidence of the strain: supplies that are uninterrupted do not need an order to stay uninterrupted.
There is a control group. AI-95, deregulated since 8 July, trades at 107.00 to 109.90 in the same Thursday survey and sits outside the subsidy table. The uncapped grade already prints the price the capped grades' costs imply.
Diversification is the supply answer on the table. Kasymaliev's list runs to four directions: Russia, Belarus, China, Uzbekistan. The freshest entries are the Urumqi agreements, Sinopec on 17 August and CNPC with its Kunlun Logistics on the 19th. As published, they name no volumes and no prices, while Russia still covers roughly 95% of the market. Against a need above 1.5 million tonnes a year, an agreement without a volume is a press release.
The calendar will force the choice. Both the ceiling and the damping money expire on 30 September. From 1 October the state either extends them, and the billion keeps growing at up to 30.1 som a litre; or lifts them, and the pump walks toward the 111 to 118 the traders actually pay; or rewrites the ceiling at the street's level, and 87.9 stops being a breach by becoming the rule.
Four documents would close this audit, and none is public. The order, if it exists, that moved the fixed price to 87.9. The formula and the registry behind the billion: which companies received it, per what calculation, for what period. Volumes and prices behind the Chinese signatures. And the decision on what happens after 30 September. From 1 September the state removes its own last excuse: fuel becomes a mandatory participant in the ΠΠ‘Π€ 2.0 electronic invoice system, and every litre sold in Kyrgyzstan will generate a line of data. The numbers will exist. Publishing them is a choice.
Aigerim Bekova writes on the political economy of Central Asia for Central Asia Wire. The views expressed are her own.