DUSHANBE, June 29, 2011, Asia-Plus — Tajikistan has needs in foreign loans, but attraction of foreign loans must be well-grounded, Bahodur Habibov, chairman of the Tajik Consumers’ Union, told Asia-Plus today.
“Attraction of them must be substantiated so that we would understand when we will benefit from them. Because we will have to repay principal and interest. But owing to what we will repay these loans? I have not yet seen substantiation of reimbursement of any loan, for example, in 10 or 20 years. What guarantee could we give that we would become more rich in 10 years and where is the guarantee that we will be able to repay this money?”
“They say funds attracted for enhancement of the energy sector will be repaid due to increase in electricity tariffs. But who will pay at such tariffs? Is our poor population able to pay for electricity at higher prices?”
He added that estimations on attraction of loans must take into consideration not only the speculative economic growth, they must also take into account real income of the population.
According to the statistical data from the Ministry of Finance (MoF), Tajikistan’s external debt rose US$45 million in three months to April 1, 2011, reaching US$1.987 billion. The external debt now amounts to 31.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Specialists from the Finance Ministry expect the country’s external debt to exceed US$2.2 billion by the end of this year.
