New Kyrgyz government paves way for renationalisation

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New Kyrgyz government paves way for renationalisation

Friday 09 April 2010
by Tom Mellen

Kyrgyzstan's new government has confirmed that it will renationalise strategically important firms and cancel deeply unpopular utility rate increases.

Social Democrat Roza Otunbayeva, who heads the opposition's self-declared interim administration, announced that she was going to "cancel newly established electric and heat power tariffs" that sparked Wednesday's uprising, calling the price rises "anti-people."

And Ms Otunbayeva declared that "all strategically important state assets which were recently privatised will be transferred back into public ownership."

She charged that ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev's sell-off of state electricity firms Severelectro and Vostokelectro had enriched his cronies at the expense of the public purse.

But Ms Otunbayeva emphasised that a lucrative deal granting the US use of the Manas airbase would be continued - at least for the near future.

"We have no intention to deal with the American base now - a top priority is to normalise the situation, to secure peace and stability," Ms Otunbayeva said as she visited a Bishkek hospital that has treated many of those wounded in two days of clashes between opposition supporters and soldiers.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/88987