The broadcaster’s correspondents talk of dwindling volumes of affordable and desirable foodstuffs. State-owned stores receive stocks of locally produced poultry, but shopkeepers put at least half of it aside for sale at twice the price on the private market, according to one correspondent in Ashgabat. Subsidized beef, meanwhile, is said to be often of highly dubious quality. And though the value of the Turkmen manat has made some gains against the dollar on the black market in recent months, prices for potatoes, vegetables and bread are inching upward.
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