234 ZOKIROV, UMAROV
aid, both of which reached high levels relative to other post-Soviet economies.
These measures reduced social pressure until 2005, when events in the Ferghana
Valley led to the Tulip Revolution.
Tajikistan in 1989 had the USSR’s lowest productive capacity and level of
economic development, and its per capita income was a mere 39 percent of the
level for the USSR as a whole. During 1991 and thereafter, Tajikistan’s economy
suffered two devastating additional blows from which it has yet to recover. The
first was the collapse of the Soviet Union, which severed benefits coming from
Moscow, and the second was the outbreak of civil war.
Prices in Tajikistan rose 115 times between 1990 and 1993, while incomes grew
by only 36 times; retail trade decreased by two-thirds by 1992 and by a further half
in 1993. Living standards fell even further than the decreases in production.
Owing to the republic’s precarious socio-economic condition, the United Na-
tions Development Programme (UNDP) Governing Council granted Tajikistan
the status of “recipient country” in 1993. By war’s end Tajikistan required more
than 400 billion rubles to restore its shattered economy. Russia, Kazakhstan, and
Uzbekistan extended a twenty-year interest-free loan of 286 billion rubles to pay
for oil and petroleum products from Russia.
Since mid-1995 the Tajik government has worked closely with the World Bank
and IMF to establish programs for macroeconomic stabilization and structural re-
form. The government reform program designed for the period from 1995 to 2000
was supported by an IMF agreement that provided a Special Drawing Rights loan
of 15 million SDR (1 SDR = US$1.4) and by two World Bank initiatives. In 1996
the World Bank’s technical assistance program helped establish a state economic
institute, and in September of that year the World Bank extended an additional $55
million loan to reconstruct agriculture and social protection programs.
In 2002, the IMF launched a three-year $87 million project to finance anti-poverty
programs and stimulate economic growth. The conclusion of bilateral agreements
on debt restructuring, mainly with Russia and Uzbekistan, decreased Tajikistan’s
external debt to $1 billion (82 percent of GDP), which further strengthened the
country’s macroeconomic indicators.
High hopes were placed on land reform. In 2002 nearly 50 percent of coopera-
tively owned land was converted into farms (
dehkans) as personal allotments. In
2001 a land registry was formed, and in 2002 the land registration fee was decreased,
which simplified the process of registering land. That same year forty large state
farms were restructured. However, many of these state farms had accumulated large
debts, which made them unattractive to private buyers. The privatization process
stalled. Even today the Tajik economy remains in a precarious state.
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