Who Finances Central Asia’s Strategic Autonomy?
Featured insight Who Finances Central Asia's Strategic Autonomy? Strategic autonomy in Central Asia is usually discussed with reference to transport corridors, critical minerals or high-level summitry. Beneath all of it, however, lies a question of capital, and the capital is not the region's own. The Eurasian Development Bank estimated in June that the region needs at least $251 billion in investment by 2030, $170 billion of it in energy, far beyond what the region can raise itself. The projects meant to reduce the region's inherited dependencies must be financed by someone else. This has a consequence that is easy to miss: external influence over Central Asia now shows less in the map of infrastructure projects than in the financing mix behind them.Each source of capital carries its own terms. Chinese…