Fans of Coca-Cola in gas-rich Turkmenistan's capital Ashgabat are complaining they can no longer "taste the feeling": their favourite drink has disappeared from shop shelves amidst a sharpening economic crisis.

"You used to be able to find it in every shop, but now only a few are selling it and the price has increased significantly," Mergen Kakayev, a 24-year-old taxi driver told AFP.

"People say it is unhealthy, but I have never noticed. For me a good meal is a piece of hot naan bread and a glass of cold Coca-Cola," said Kakayev, who got hooked on the drink ever since it first appeared in the secluded country in the 1990s.

Turkmenistan has imposed increasingly draconian restrictions on foreign currency exchange as global prices for hydrocarbons -- over 90 percent of the country's exports -- collapsed in 2014.   

A spokeswoman for the drink's producer, Coca-Cola Icecek, which employs around 300 people in Ashgabat, told AFP by telephone it was "facing raw material supply shortages" due to "temporary hard currency conversion issues", but was not planning to leave the market.