In the first four months of 2011 real GDP rose by 3.2% year on year, a sharp slowdown compared with the rate of 10.5% recorded in the year-earlier period. The economy is still struggling to recover from the after-effects of the violent political and inter-ethnic turmoil seen in 2010. Furthermore, the important gold-mining sector is exerting a drag on overall economic performance. Excluding production at the Kumtor goldmine-the largest in the Kyrgyz Republic and the country's most significant economic asset-real GDP rose by 3.7% year on year in January-April 2011. In the same period of 2010, by contrast, real GDP had been boosted by higher Kumtor production: excluding Kumtor, real GDP rose by just 5.7% in that period, only around one-half the pace of growth when Kumtor output was included.

Similar trends are observed in the reported growth rates for industrial production. Industrial output, excluding Kumtor, rose by 12% year on year in January-April, compared with 5.6% when output at the mine is included in the calculation. Again, this is a reversal of the phenomenon in the year-earlier period, when Kumtor boosted overall industrial output growth to 57.2%, compared with 40.6% for the non-gold sector.

Retail trade is recovering only slowly from the violence in 2010, when many outlets suffered from looting, and traders were affected by border closures with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Retail trade turnover rose by 1% year on year in the first four months of 2011, compared with a fall of 6.6% in the year-earlier period.