Kyrgyz Central Bank Turns To Folk Music To Teach About Economy

Kyrgyzstan's central bank has commissioned well-known folk performers to sing about inflation and interest rates in an ad campaign aimed at improving financial literacy in the Central Asian country

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Oct, 2019 ):Kyrgyzstan's central bank has commissioned well-known folk performers to sing about inflation and interest rates in an ad campaign aimed at improving financial literacy in the Central Asian country.

In the first ad, running on television and online, popular singer-songwriter Bayan Akhmatov strums a lute-like instrument called the komuz as he praises the central bank for its work to bring down inflation.

"Without this, our economy would collapse," he sings, wearing a traditional black-and-white high felt hat and embroidered jacket.

He added that in modern times people are "literally fighting over money and credit." The bank said in a statement it chose folk singers to perform in a series of five ads because it wanted to reach the public through "traditional, historically established channels." "It's not easy for an ordinary person to understand what the country's central bank does," it said.

High interest rates of over 20 percent on loans are a major source of public dissatisfaction for majority-Muslim Kyrgyzstan,which is the second poorest of the fifteen republics to emerge fromthe collapse of the Soviet Union.