Turkmenistan persists with "artificial stability" in its exchange rate, officially calculating the worth of one dollar at Turkmenistani manat (TMT) 3.50, with the black market value hovering around TMT 19.50 to 20.

As lately reported by Radio Azatlyk, the dual exchange rate produces an “illusion” that is widely considered one of the main causes of material inequality in the tightly controlled authoritarian country – so the fact that President Serdar Berdimuhamedov recently spoke at a government conference on what he described as the essential need to pay special attention to maintaining a stable exchange rate (he did not mention the existence of the dual rate) did not go down well with the impoverished.

The media outlet spoke to one inhabitant of Ashgabat who observed that a Turkmen who works abroad and sends remittances to his family every month knows that both he and his family are being “robbed” by the state.

The existence of the official and unofficial exchange rates for the dollar also creates great difficulties for foreign companies engaged in Turkmenistan export-import operations.

In the meantime, the ruling classes go on accumulating ill-gotten gains at the expense of ordinary people, critics say.

"Three and a half thousand manat is actually $150 [not $1,000], so the high salary [that the authorities say exists] is actually worth nothing," another Turkmen observer told Azatlyk.

The news service also quoted an unnamed expert at the Turkmen central bank, who said that “the two exchange rates only serve selected people, who buy the currency [dollar] cheaply, sell it to the public for 20 manats, transfer money abroad and cause a lot of harm to the country, and the public knows this.”