Over the first three quarters of this year, the government of Tajikistan has managed to reduce the volume of the country’s external debt by 29.5 million U.S. dollars. According to the preliminary data from the Ministry of Finance (MoF), Tajikistan’s external debt has amounted to 3.2142 billion U.S. dollars as of October 1, 2022 (as of January 1 this year, Tajikistan’s external debt reportedly amounted to 3.2437 billion U.S. dollars).
Government borrowing, which ensures the performance of public services, reportedly accounted for about 95.5 percent of the country’s external debt – 3.0691 billion U.S. dollars.
Debts raised by individual institutions, organizations, companies under the state guarantee have reportedly amounted to 144.7 million U.S. dollars
Debts with a state guarantee in the structure of external debt have amounted to 96.3 million U.S. dollars.
The debt of the National Bank of Tajikistan to the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) has amounted to 0.4 million U.S. dollars.
The decrease in the volume of external debt was facilitated by reduction of direct government borrowing by 63.3 million U.S. dollars.
Besides, the NBT has managed pay off its debts in full to the International Monetary Fund (11.3 million U.S. dollars) and China (2 million U.S. dollars) as well as to reduce its debt to the IsDB by 1.3 million U.S. dollars.
However, debts with the state guarantee have increased by 48.4 million U.S. dollars during this year.
The Export-Import Bank of China (Eximbank) remains the largest creditor of Tajikistan – more than 1 billion U.S. dollars.
Tajikistan’s large-scale borrowing from China started around 2006. According to Eurasianet, Dushanbe and Beijing signed their last major loan deal in 2014, with the project – Stage 2 of the Dushanbe-2 combined heat and power (CHP) plant completed in 2016. Despite extensive Chinese FDI in mining and other ventures with commercial potential, there is reportedly no major project currently under construction in Tajikistan directly financed by Eximbank.
Tajikistan pleaded for relief from its international creditors and has already received positive feedback from China. China has suspended debt repayments from Tajikistan.
Tajikistan now also owes 357 million U.S. dollars to the World Bank, 291 million U.S. dollars to Asian Development Bank (ADB), 190 million U.S. dollars to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and 184 million U.S. dollars to the IsDB.
Debts due to placement of government bonds (Eurobonds) in international financial markets amount to US$500 million.
