Over he first five months of this year, Tajikistan’s national budget for 2021 has been overfulfilled by 5.8 percent, according to the Ministry of Finance (MoF).
Over the reporting period, the country’s public purse has received about 10.7 billion somonis (equivalent to 954 million U.S. dollars) instead of the originally planned 10.1 billion somonis (equivalent to 890 million U.S. dollars), a source at a MoF told Asia-Plus in an interview.
It has reportedly become possible due to the increase in the rate of collection of the value added tax (VAT), income tax and corporate tax.
In all, taxes have accounted for some 73 percent of the budget’s revenues over the reporting period.
It is to be noted that in recent years, Tajikistan has been chronically short of the planned revenues and the authorities have had to cover the deficit by grants received from international financial institutions.
In different years, tax revenues varied from 77.9% (2014) to 60.7% (2016).
Over the past decade, loans and grants reportedly accounted for 15 percent of the budget revenues, special funds of the federally funded organizations – 9.0 percent, non-tax receipts – 7.0 percent, and free balances of the previous year – 1.3 percent.
Analysis of the tax structure shows that these receipts decreased during crises and began to recover in post-crisis periods.
For example, after the global economic and financial crisis of 2008 tax collections tended to rise until 2014.
Then, due to the economic crisis in 2014 in Russia, which is the major trading partner of Tajikistan and the principal destination of Tajik labor migrants, tax revenues began to decline again over the next two years. Tax collection has recovered somewhat in the post-crisis period, but tax revenues declined last year due to the coronavirus pandemic and related factors.
Over this period, VAT share in the structure of tax revenues amounted to 44 percent; income tax share – 14 percent, and social tax share – 12 percent.
Recall, revenues of the 2021 budget are projected to be 27.6 billion somonis and expenditures stand at 28.1 billion somonis.
Social spending is earmarked to account for 47% of budget allocations, with nearly 10 percent earmarked for public education alone.
Tax receipts are expected to stand at 18.8 billion somonis, which is more than 68 percent of the overall volume of the revenues.
