Opportunities and factors of accelerated economic growth in the Republic of Tajikistan

Abstract

The article examines Tajikistan’s economic growth and the reasons why persistently high GDP growth has not yet been accompanied by a comparable expansion of productive employment and domestically generated income. The relevance of the study stems from the combination of rapid economic and demographic growth, the major role of labour migration and remittances, the capital-intensive nature of many industrial and infrastructure projects, and the country’s transport and energy constraints. In 2025, Tajikistan’s real GDP grew by 8.4 percent, while the World Bank continued to identify limited domestic job creation and dependence on external income as major constraints on structural transformation. The purpose of the paper is to identify the factors limiting the conversion of high growth rates into sustainable employment and domestic value added. The methodological framework combines structural-dynamic, comparative and institutional approaches and uses official statistics of the Republic of Tajikistan, World Bank and IMF data, EITI materials, international organizations’ reports and Tajikistan’s national development programmes. The analysis shows that labour migration supports household income and poverty reduction, whereas mining, hydropower and large infrastructure projects generate rapid output growth but, because of their capital intensity, cannot by themselves absorb the country’s growing labour force. The paper concludes that industrial and infrastructure projects should be assessed not only by investment, extraction or generation volumes, but also by permanent employment, depth of processing, use of domestic resources and the share of value added retained in the national economy.