Kyrgyzstan on Tuesday asked China for debt relief, as the impoverished Central Asian state struggles with the economic shocks of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

President Sooronbai Jeenbekov's office said he had asked Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to consider "easing and prolonging payments on Kyrgyzstan's external debt to China" during a phone call.

The request was made "considering the negative impact of the infection on the macroeconomic situation."

The pair also discussed the resumption of trade at their shared border and agreed that China would send medical specialists to help Kyrgyzstan battle the coronavirus, Jeenbekov's office said in a statement.

The statement did not say how Xi responded to the request for debt relief.

The Export-Import Bank of China (Eximbank) owns more than two-fifths of Kyrgyzstan's nearly $4 billion foreign debt and has financed major transport and energy projects in the country.

Kyrgyzstan's capital and other key cities have been locked down since last month when coronavirus cases began to emerge in the country, reaching 430 with five deaths as of Tuesday.

Kyrgyzstan, an ex-Soviet republic of six million people, was the first country to receive emergency funding from the International Monetary Fund after the virus outbreak.

The economy is reliant on the output of a single major gold mine, while hundreds of thousands of Kyrgyz migrants working in Russia have sent home remittances worth billions of dollars in recent years.

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