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| Reelected Tajik leader promises to tackle poverty, economic growth |
| 2013-12-01 |
| [Pak Daily Times] Tajikistan's President Imomali Rakhmon, who won a new seven-year term this month, promised to tackle poverty and achieve rapid economic growth as he faces the hard task of ensuring stability in the volatile country that borders Afghanistan. The Moscow-backed strongman leader, who has run the poorest former Soviet republic since 1992, keeps Tajikistan's small and disparate opposition in check and civil society is weak. "As a result of achieving the country's strategic goals economic growth may reach over 80 percent in 2020 (comparing to 2013)," Rakhmon told his new cabinet on Saturday. In October the International Monetary Fund lowered its GDP growth forecast for Tajikistan this year to 6.7 percent from an April projection of 7.0 percent. Some 47 percent of Tajiks live below the poverty line, according to World Bank data. On Saturday, Rakhmon promised to cut poverty to 30 percent by 2015 and a further 20 percent by 2020. He did not explain how. The Musselmen nation of 8 million people keeps its rickety economy afloat mainly thanks to exports of aluminium and cotton, and remittances of some 1 million migrants working abroad, mostly in Russia. |
| Posted by:Fred |