DUSHANBE (TCA) — In the next three years Tajikistan plans to attract foreign loans and grants worth more than $967 million, Finance Minister Abdusalom Kurboniyon said in parliament on November 16 during the consideration of the country’s program of foreign borrowings for 2017-2019, Avesta news agency reported.
In the minister’s words, the money will be borrowed for implementation of 98 priority investment projects in such sectors as energy, transport and communications, agriculture, and education.
“In accordance with the Strategy of State Debt Management [the government] observes a limit of the foreign debt which should not exceed 40 percent of the country’s GDP. We are approaching this limit and the size of the foreign debt is currently 35.6 percent of GDP,” Kurboniyon said.
He said that the years 2016, 2017 and 2018 see a peak of the foreign debt’s servicing, so the government has decided to attract foreign borrowings for priority investment projects only.
The finance minister also said that already today, the foreign debt servicing is a burden for the state budget. Tajikistan’s draft budget for 2017 plans to allocate more than 1.7 billion somoni (around US $220 million) for this purpose.
The main foreign creditors of Tajikistan are the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank, China’s Eximbank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and Arab financial institutions.
In the first half of 2016, Tajikistan’s foreign debt amounted to $2.276 billion or 35.9 percent of the country’s GDP.
