Paper long abstract:

Turkmenistan represents one of the most challenging environments for business and investments. Nevertheless, the profound analysis of the investment potential is still far behind the expectations both from business practices and from an academic perspective. The paper attempts to include complex analyses of the business and investment climate in the country from several principal points of views - political (political elites, geopolitics), technical (infrastructure, standards), legal (laws and law enforcement, taxes) and economic (economic system, budget, banking system, foreign currency exchange) and human aspects (informal rules, corruption, language and local business culture). The research includes the analyses of accessible open sources and interviews with available business people (at least those willing to speak).