of the country's foreign trade is imports: $13.0 billion in 2025, per the National Statistical Committee
Kyrgyzstan: a market that imports four dollars of every five it trades
Kyrgyzstan's foreign trade came to $15.8 billion in 2025, and $13.0 billion of it was imports, more than 81% of the total. A country of 7.4 million people that buys almost everything abroad is a market a brand joins rather than opens, through whoever already brings goods across the border.
The numbers
24.kg reported the year's results on 16 February 2026, citing the National Statistical Committee: trade turnover of $15.825 billion, down 11.2%; exports of $2.852 billion, down 44.5%; imports of $12.973 billion, up 3.5%. Imports made up more than 81% of everything traded. Exports fell by almost half while imports kept growing, which describes an economy fed from outside.
Where the goods come from matters more than the total. Trade with the Eurasian Economic Union reached $5.924 billion, up 7.7%, and imports from the union alone came to $4.772 billion, up 25% in a year. Inside that union trade, Russia accounted for 64.9% and Kazakhstan for 31.5%. Put plainly: more than a third of what Kyrgyzstan imports arrives from its two northern neighbours, and a distributor sitting in Almaty often already serves Bishkek.
The population has passed 7.4 million, per the same statistics committee. It is a small market by count and a real one by habit: the habit of importing.
How goods get in
Kyrgyzstan has been a member of the Eurasian Economic Union since 12 August 2015. An EAC certificate or declaration obtained for Kazakhstan is valid here, as it is in all five member states, according to certification firms such as Schmidt & Schmidt. There is no second certification to budget for.
That turns entry into a partner and logistics question rather than a regulatory one. The practical decision is whether the Kazakh distributor covers Kyrgyzstan from Almaty, whether a Bishkek company takes the territory on its own, or whether the volume justifies neither yet. All three answers are common, and the numbers above are what decide between them.
Where buyers look
DataReportal's Digital 2026 report counts 7.32 million people by the UN's estimate, 6.48 million internet users, 88.5% of the population, and 3.90 million social media user identities. Instagram's advertising tools reach 3.90 million, Facebook 938 thousand. As elsewhere in the region, the report has no figure for Telegram, because Telegram publishes none.
In our experience the trade itself runs in messenger groups, WhatsApp and Telegram, and Instagram is where a company's face is checked. A brand a Bishkek buyer cannot find in Russian on a phone screen is a brand that does not get the forwarded price request.
Language
Business correspondence with the companies we have worked with in Kyrgyzstan has run in Russian; Kyrgyz matters for consumer-facing content outside the capital. Materials prepared for Kazakhstan in Russian work here without a rewrite, which is one more reason the two markets are usually entered together. Whether they need a site of their own at all is a question we took apart in the Journal.
When the market gathers
KyrgyzBuild, the construction show, runs each April in Bishkek; the organiser has set the next edition for 13-15 April 2027. That is the scale of the exhibition market here: one show worth attending per sector. The organiser publishes the exhibitor list before the show; read it as a register of who is active in the category, because that is what it is.
What we do in Kyrgyzstan
Bishkek is a day's drive from Almaty, and we cover Kyrgyzstan from there. In the Pilot month it comes as part of the Kazakhstan check: the same certificate, distributors mapped together, and a separate local landing page only if demand here turns out to differ from the Kazakh one. The written go or no-go at the end of the month covers both countries.