Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan is located in Central Asia, bordering the Caspian Sea between Iran and Kazakhstan, with a landscape of flat-to-rolling sandy desert and the Garagum Desert occupying over 80 percent of the country. The climate is subtropical desert, and Ashgabat serves as the capital. Turkmenistan has a population of approximately 5.74 million people who speak Turkmen, Russian, and Uzbek.

Turkmenistan has an upper-middle-income Central Asian economy that houses the fourth-largest natural gas reserves in the world and is rich in natural resources including petroleum, natural gas, sulfur, and salt. Key industries include natural gas, oil, petroleum products, textiles, and food processing. The economy is dominated by state-owned enterprises and faces challenges including an overvalued currency, high inflation risks, and lack of economic diversification due to heavy state control and bureaucracy.