Poverty Tajikistan's only growth area
By Sayrahmon Nazriev and Aslibegim Manzarshoeva
QURGHONTEPPA and DUSHANBE - As government figures confirm that the global
economic downturn is having major effects on Tajikistan, experts warn that more
and more households in Central Asia's poorest country will be driven into
poverty.
Aside from collapsing production and exports, the decline in money sent home by
migrants working abroad will deprive families of a key income source.
Tajikistan's statistical agency reports that the economy grew by 2.8% year on
year in the first six months of 2009, half the rate seen in the same period of
2008. Industrial production fell by 13%, and export revenues were 48% down, a
reflection of low world
prices and lack of demand for aluminum and cotton, Tajikistan's key export
commodities.
As of June, one-third of all industrial plants and factories across the country
were at a standstill, said Nuriddin Kayumov, director of Tajikistan's Institute
of Economic Studies.
"Many directors are complaining that they can't sell their products and they
are being forced to send their workers on unpaid leave," he said.
The slump has slashed tax revenues, so that even the modest expenditure levels
the government envisages after scaling down its budget earlier this year may
not be achievable.
Tajik President Imomali Rahmon warned as much on a visit to the southern
Khatlon region last month, when he criticized the provincial government for its
low tax-collection rates and expressed concern that public-sector wages and
pensions were not being paid on time.
Delays on wages and pensions are already occurring reported, and appear to be
worse in rural areas.
"The state owes pensioners in our village two months in back-payments and when
you get it, it's only for one month," said 75-year-old Zaynab from Bokhtar in
southern Tajikistan.
Zaynab said that even when she got her pension, worth around US$13 a month, it
was not enough to buy a sack of flour, just "a bit of flour and some oil".
Aside from conventional economic activities like agriculture and industry, one
of Tajikistan's main sources of income in recent years has been money
remittances from the estimated 1.5 million migrants working abroad, mainly in
Russia and also Kazakhstan.
These funds keep families afloat and contribute to economic growth - between
30% and 50% of Tajikistan's gross domestic product, according to various
estimates - by paying for goods and services on the domestic market.
Citing World Bank figures, the Tajik economy ministry reports that recorded
remittances, that is, money transferred through the banks rather than being
carried home in cash, stood at $525 million in the January-May period, a 34%
drop on the same period of 2008.
Sangchagul Jononova from Bokhtar district described how the income of her
15-member family was slashed after two of her three sons returned from Russia
after losing their jobs. She used to receive a total of $300 from them, but the
two now at home are earning much less - one gets $45 a month working on a
building site and the other far less than that as a farmhand.
"We don't have enough money for food, let alone clothes and shoes," she told
IWPR. "The new school year starts soon, and I don't know how I'm going to send
the children to school ... The only things we can afford now are bread and tea,
sometimes with sugar."
Over the summer, Jononova has supplement her family's diet with fruit and
vegetables from her garden, but this will end when winter comes.
Like many returning migrants and their families, Jononova can only hope the
crisis in Russia will end soon so her sons can go back there.
Analysts warn that the multiple effects of the crisis - falling remittances,
job losses at factories, and small business closures as consumers spend less -
will inevitably force more and more people below the bread line, at a time when
the government is struggling to pay wages and benefits.
Prior to the crisis, the World Bank calculated that 54% of Tajikistan's
population were living on less than $2 a day, its benchmark figure for
assessing poverty.
Hojimahmad Umarov, a professor at the Institute for Economic Studies, says that
figure has now risen to 60%. Meanwhile, 15% of people in Tajikistan are living
on less than $1 a day.
"These are families that cannot rely on members working abroad as labor
migrants. Most of them live in Khatlon and in Badakhshan," he said.
Najiba Shirinbekova, who heads a non-government group called Law and
Prosperity, notes that the north of Tajikistan, traditionally better off than
other parts of the country, is also being hit.
"The latest information indicates a particularly high level of poverty in the
ostensibly wealthy, industrially developed Soghd region. This is because
factories are standing idle because of the financial crisis and the winter
energy crisis," she said.
Larisa, a 59-year-old resident of the capital Dushanbe, typifies the kind of
people who still have jobs but have few other resources to prevent them sliding
into poverty.
Living on her own, she earns about $30 a month, placing her in Umarov's bottom
15%. Her wage has to cover food, household utilities and travel to and from
work.
"I haven't bought myself any clothes probably for three years. I've forgotten
what meat, sausages, cheese and cream taste like. I buy small amounts on
holidays, and sometimes neighbors invite me over for a meal," she said.
Although the inflation rate is lower this year than last, prices in the shops
are still rising enough to cut into Larisa's purchasing power. At her age, not
in the best of health, she cannot take on a second job to top up her income.
"If it gets very difficult, I will have to turn to my children for help and
hope they won't leave me to fend for myself," said Larisa, whose children have
emigrated to Russia.
People further up the income rung, for example shopkeepers and market traders,
are also seeing their earnings eaten away.
Since most of their customers' money was sent by relatives abroad rather than
earned in Tajikistan, the decline in remittances has led to shops closing and a
slowdown in trading at the traditional open-air bazaars.
"People are trying to buy only the most essential items," said a Dushanbe
businessman who gave his first name as Aknazar.
Selling foodstuffs wholesale to other parts in the country, Aknazar reckons he
is turning over less than a third of what he would have been making before the
crisis.
"Previously, I was supplying beer and chicken to the Pamirs [Badakhshan
region], but now some of my regular customers come only once every three
months. The prices of many goods have increased including sugar and cooking oil
and the same thing is happening to flour."
Mavzuna, who works in a women's clothes store in Dushanbe's Sadbarg shopping
center, said, "Trade has practically died out, we don't know how to pay the
rent, which the owners have increased." Shop assistants like Mavzuna find
themselves under increasing pressure to make money.
"We are told to deliver sales worth $22 on a daily basis, but how can we
achieve that? At the moment we aren't reaching that sales target in the course
of a week.”
Sayrahmon Nazriev and Aslibegim Manzarshoeva are IWPR-trained journalists in
Tajikistan.
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