Companies in Uzbekistan have shelled out around half a billion dollars in fines after failing to pay salaries to their staff.
This is the latest indication that the country is grappling with economic problems which are absent from the rosy official picture of steady growth.
Firms were slapped with fines worth a total of 1.5 billion sum ($500 million at the official exchange rate) last year for wage arrears owed to employees, Russian state news service Sputnik reported this week.
The fines resulted from 1,300 complaints filed with the State Legal Labor Inspection service, Sputnik said.
The wage arrears were generally the result of a lack of funds at the organization in question, an unnamed labor inspection official. Other reasons included organizations holding money back to make a profit on interest, and simple bureaucratic hitches in making payments.
The revelation suggests that companies may be ailing in the face of the economic crisis that is gripping Central Asian — although the government is in denial about the impact of the region-wide crisis on Uzbekistan.
Its bullish economic forecast sees growth at 7.6 percent this year, despite falls in key commodity prices — gold, cotton and gas — and a massive drop in remittances from migrant laborers in Russia that is eating into disposable incomes.
With recession in Russia forcing many migrants out of work, the government is reporting that jobs are being created at home in Uzbekistan on a massive scale.
If Tashkent’s statistics are to be believed (and economists warn that they should be taken with a grain of salt), nearly 2 million extra jobs will have been created over two years by the end of 2016: 980,000 in 2015 and 990,000 in 2016, according to Sputnik.
Joanna Lillis is a journalist based in Almaty and author of Dark Shadows: Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan.
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