The World Bank has published the GDP rating of 200 countries. Turkmenistan ranks 88th with the GDP volume of $42,35 billion.
The pro-government web-based media outlet Arzuw reports that Turkmenistan was included in the top-90 economic ranking of the World Bank, leaving behind Kyrgyzstan ($7,5 billion — 145th place) and Tajikistan ($7,1 billion — 147th place), and was slightly outperformed by Uzbekistan with $48,7 billion — 85th.
It should be mentioned that the WB uses official data provided by national governments.
Moreover, when converting Turkmenistan’s GDP from the national currency into dollars the official exchange rate of 3,5 manats per 1 USD was used.
It should be emphasized that after restrictions on foreign currency conversion restrictions had been imposed in Turkmenistan, “the black market” emerged where the exchange rate significantly fluctuated throughout the year.
According to sources of “Chronicles of Turkmenistan”, at the start of the year the dollar was bought at 11 manats at the “black market”, in late May its value increased to 25 manats and now, after the fight against foreign currency speculators was launched, the dollar dropped down to 15 manats.
When converting GDP into dollars using the current market exchange rate, the GDP will total $9,87 billion.
In this case Turkmenistan would rank 139th between Chad and Benin. If Turkmenistan’s GDP was converted using the maximum rate (25 manats), Turkmenistan would rank 152nd with $5,92 billion between Guam (with the population of 160 thousand) and Liechtenstein (36 thousand).
Update:
The WB rating was compiled in 2017.
Last year the dollar exchange rate rose from 7 manats in February up to 10 in December.
This, when converted into dollars at “the black market” rate, GDP in 2017 amounted to $17,4 billion on average. In this case Turkmenistan would have ranked 115th between Botswana and Zimbabwe.
We would like to apologize for the error.