How Poor is Poor in Tajikistan?

from Turkish Weekly

As Tajikistan’s government announces plans to cut the number of poor people by one-quarter by 2010, commentators say the measurement of poverty needs to be both accurate and ongoing, since it is a relative concept.

In order to achieve its goal, the government is drafting a document that will see funding earmarked from external investment and domestic budget revenues to implement poverty reduction strategies that are already in place.

Rustam Jaborov, one of the architects of the government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy, said this programme and Tajikistan’s National Development Strategy to 2015 both envisage that some five billion US dollars drawn from loans, direct investment, and grants, will be spent on developing the economy and creating new production capacity and jobs.

The most recent World Bank study dates from 2003, and showed that 64 per cent of the population were living below the poverty line. Jaborov said the percentage was estimated at about 58 per cent in 2005. If you earn less than two dollars a day, you count as poor, he said.
A source in the government’s statistical agency told NBCentralAsia that the real scale of poverty could be even greater.

“The methodology the World Bank has used in two past studies is based on purchasing power parity and does not show the full picture,” the source said, adding that the average consumer basket has not been properly defined in Tajikistan, not least because such measurements ideally need to be made all year round using the same families.
Sociologist Firuz Saidov noted that poverty indicators change over time, so that a new poverty baseline study will be needed soon. “The problem used to be access to food, but now it’s about other things such as access to education and medicine,” he said.

Saidov was extremely doubtful that it would be possible to reduce the number of poor by 25 per cent in the three years that are left to the 2010 deadline. Supposing current challenges such as labour emigration, agriculture, major energy projects and electricity provision are overcome, he predicts it will take the government 10 or 15 years to achieve its target.

(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)