The Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs not too long ago launched the Central Asia Useful resource Tracker, a public dataset that maps reserves, manufacturing, processing, and export locations for greater than 100 minerals, hydrocarbons, chemical compounds, industrial supplies, and agricultural items throughout Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. A part of the broader Central Asian Capital & Markets venture, the tracker covers greater than $118 billion in annual useful resource exports and follows 33 important minerals from extraction to vacation spot markets.
Its clearest discovering is Kazakhstan’s overwhelming weight within the regional extractive economic system. Kazakh oil alone accounts for 40 p.c of all exports captured by the tracker, adopted by Turkmen gasoline at 9.2 p.c, Uzbek gold at 8.3 p.c, Kazakh gold at 7.7 p.c, and Kyrgyz gold at 5.3 p.c. Hydrocarbons make up simply over half of the overall, at $61 billion, whereas important mineral exports quantity to $15.7 billion per yr, of which $14 billion come from Kazakhstan, led by copper at $7.3 billion and uranium at $4.2 billion.
The vacation spot information complicates acquainted assumptions in regards to the area’s exterior orientation. The European Union is the biggest importer of Central Asian assets as a bloc, taking 29.1 p.c of the overall tracked exports, whereas China is the biggest single-country importer at roughly one quarter. The UK and Switzerland every account for round 10 p.c, a lot of it in treasured metals. Russia, against this, immediately absorbs simply 1.2 p.c of the exports coated by the dataset.
But low import volumes shouldn’t be mistaken for low leverage. Oxus notes that greater than 80 p.c of Kazakhstan’s oil nonetheless transits by Russian pipelines, giving Moscow outsized affect over a commerce stream it doesn’t itself devour in giant portions. In follow, meaning the area’s geoeconomic orientation is extra diversified than typical knowledge suggests, whilst Soviet-era and Russian-controlled infrastructure continues to form what can transfer, the place, and at what political value.
Important minerals reveal a unique hierarchy. China absorbs just below half of Central Asia’s important mineral exports, Russia roughly one quarter, EU nations 6.4 p.c, and the USA 2.1 p.c. That imbalance helps clarify why Brussels and Washington have stepped up their outreach to the area in recent times. On the first EU-Central Asia summit in Samarkand in April 2025, European leaders introduced a 12 billion euro International Gateway funding bundle, together with 2.5 billion euros devoted to important uncooked supplies.
That push is pushed not solely by industrial coverage however by vulnerability. The EU has already signed important minerals memoranda with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and the Samarkand summit elevated that effort to the regional stage by a Joint Declaration of Intent on Important Uncooked Supplies. For Western policymakers, the attraction of Central Asia lies not merely in useful resource abundance, however in the potential of constructing provide chains much less uncovered to Chinese language processing dominance and Russian transit chokepoints.
Tajikistan occupies solely a small share of the area’s export earnings, however the tracker suggests it holds disproportionate strategic significance in at the very least one area of interest commodity. Oxus estimates that Tajikistan accounts for 20 p.c of worldwide antimony manufacturing, making it one of many world’s most vital suppliers of a metallic utilized in protection, electronics, and industrial purposes. The tracker additionally attributes 12 p.c of worldwide antimony reserves to Tajikistan, together with 11.2 p.c of worldwide manganese reserves and seven.6 p.c of worldwide lead reserves.
The nation’s commerce geography is hanging. In keeping with accessible commerce information mirrored within the tracker, Tajik antimony flows overwhelmingly to France and Belgium, with Turkiye taking a lot of the the rest. That sample has gained added significance as China tightened export controls on antimony, sharpening concern amongst Western governments and producers over concentrated provide chains for strategic supplies. Even so, Tajikistan stays the smallest exporter within the regional dataset, with simply $1.16 billion in whole useful resource exports.
The tracker’s important worth is just not that it produces solely new uncooked information, however that it assembles fragmented public info right into a single usable map. Oxus attracts on sources together with the U.S. Geological Survey, the World Financial institution’s WITS database, the Observatory of Financial Complexity, OPEC, the U.S. Vitality Info Administration, and the Worldwide Vitality Company, with export figures drawn from the newest accessible yr between 2021 and 2025 relying on the commodity. That patchwork imposes limits: the dataset is healthier learn as a regional snapshot than as a time collection, and it can’t by itself seize how sanctions, worth swings, or border disruptions change commerce flows over time.
Nonetheless, the political and analytical utility is clear. Claims like European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen’s suggestion that a big share of Europe’s future strategic mineral wants may very well be met by Central Asia turn into simpler to check in opposition to clear, commodity-level information. For journalists, researchers, and traders, the tracker gives one thing the area has lengthy lacked: a public instrument to observe how Central Asia’s oil, gasoline, gold, uranium, copper, and antimony transfer by the worldwide economic system — and the place the actual bottlenecks nonetheless lie.
