The Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan has unveiled a $7 billion plan to revitalise its struggling economy in the next five years with help from Russian, Chinese and Western investment and aid. The economy in Kyrgyzstan, one of the poorest former Soviet republics, relies heavily on production from a single gold mine and cash sent home by hundreds of thousands of migrant workers.

The new investment plan includes energy, transport and communication projects and agricultural development work. The mountainous country of 5.5 million people lies along a drug trafficking route from Afghanistan and has twice overthrown a president since 2005. Nearly 500 people died during clashes in 2010 between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the country's south.

In a meeting with donors on Friday, President Almazbek Atambayev said Kyrgyzstan's economy had yet to become self-sufficient in two decades of independence, having squandered much of the industrial legacy left by the Soviet Union. Atambayev became president in 2011 in the first peaceful transition of power in Kyrgyzstan's post-Soviet history. A pioneer for parliamentary democracy in otherwise authoritarian Central Asia, the country is also prone to political infighting. "The stability achieved over the last two years is not secure enough," Atambayev said. "Kyrgyzstan's main problem on the road to preserving its independence is internal conflict."

Copyright Reuters, 2012