The mechanism is a damper with the state at the bottom. Importers sell at the capped pump prices, 87.80 to 87.90 som a litre for AI-92 and 99.90 for diesel in Bishkek this week, and claim the difference between what the fuel cost them by contract and invoice, transport included, and the reference price the cabinet has now fixed. Claims go in by the 25th of the following month; the tax, customs or antimonopoly service has 7 working days to check them, an interagency group 3 more. The main provisions apply from 1 August.
The size of the difference is the whole story. In early August, by the traders' own account, diesel was being bought at $1,550 to $1,600 a tonne and AI-92 at $1,400 to $1,450. Against the new reference prices that is a gap of $500 to $550 on every tonne of diesel and $440 to $490 on every tonne of petrol. Every 100,000 tonnes of AI-92 bought at those prices would cost the budget $44 million to $49 million. The gap will move with the market; the reference prices will not, unless the cabinet rewrites them again.
The bill so far is modest by that measure. As of 25 August the state had allocated 956.1 million som to importers, about $11 million at this week's rate of 87.45 som to the dollar, and the antimonopoly service said last Friday that there was no shortage, only dearer new batches. The extension is what changes the arithmetic: 3 more months of compensation at a gap set in Russia and paid in Bishkek.
Bishkek is paying because the alternatives are dearer and slower. Russia's ban on petrol exports runs to 31 January 2027; diesel producers regain the right to export from 1 September. The first date is far off. The second is untested. Kyrgyzstan burns about 2 million tonnes of fuel a year and, until this summer, drew about 95% of it from Russia. The agreements with Sinopec on 17 August and CNPC on 19 August carry no published volumes or prices. Product is also arriving from Belarus, Azerbaijan and Turkey.
The gap will move with the market; the reference prices will not, unless the cabinet rewrites them again.
The refinery is the long answer, and it is late. On Tuesday the National Investment Agency signed a further agreement with China's Central Asia Energy Company allowing the next stage of the modernisation of the Junda plant in Kara-Balta to begin: $193.75 million on paper, Euro-5 output at the end of it, 800,000 tonnes of crude a year in capacity. An earlier agreement had the work finished by 31 July. The agency has not said whether that date was formally moved. President Japarov has spoken of 2028 and of about $500 million from the Chinese side; the agency's figure is $193.75 million, and nobody has reconciled the two. The feedstock is imported as well: Kyrgyzstan pumped 262,000 tonnes of crude last year, about a third of Junda's capacity.
What the decree does, in effect, is turn a summer measure into a fourth-quarter budget line and hand its size to events in Russia. The subsidy wall Aigerim Bekova wrote about on 21 August has moved by 3 months. The date to watch is now 31 December, and the number to watch is the invoice price traders report in September, when Russian refiners regain the right to export diesel and the petrol ban stays.