President Emomali Rahmon has promised to double the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate and turn Tajikistan into energy independent country during his next seven-year presidential term.   

His promises came during an address to participants of an inauguration ceremony that took place on October 30. 

Emomali Rahmon President addressed the participants of the inauguration ceremony with a keynote speech, in which he outlined the main ways and directions of development.

The head of state, in particular, noted that within the next seven years, “we must achieve complete energy independence, come out of transport deadlock and turn Tajikistan into a transit country due to effective use of national resources and all opportunities we have.”  

“During this period, we must move closer to another strategic goal – ensuring food security and speeding up the process of industrialization that will allow creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs and reducing labor migration,” Rahmon said.  

He also pointed to the necessity of improving the level and quality of life of people due to expanding implementation of the National Development Strategy of Tajikistan designed or the period up to 2030, “because every citizen of the country deserves a decent life.” 

“During the next seven years, the economic sector will give attention to three main tasks: ensuring sustainable development; increasing middle class percentage of the country’s population; and achieving the level of socio-economic development of middle-income countries.” Rahmon said. 

“Within the next seven years, we must double the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate, increase middle class percentage to 45 percent and reduce poverty rate to 15 percent,” the head of state noted.   

Rahmon noted that they intend to gradually improve the quality of services in the fields of science, education, healthcare and social protection and channel more than 123 billion somoni to these areas from all sources of financing by taking into account the pensions and social insurance.  

“Over the next seven years, the country's banking sector will provide more than 100 billion somoni in loans for the development of various economic and social spheres and thereby increase this indicator by 1.5 times compared to the previous seven years.

According to him, training of professionals among the youth and their employment at all levels of public service will be at the forefront of the government’s work.  “Within the next seven years, we intend to enroll more than 540,000 young people by higher education institutions in the country, dispatch up to 40,000 talented young people to study abroad in developed countries to train highly qualified personnel for various sectors of our national economy,” Rahmon said.  

“Today, women play a very important role in all sectors of the national economy and public service, and in the future, we will create better conditions for them and fully support the initiatives of women in the country.  We will draft and implement the 2021-2030 National Strategy for Empowerment of Women in the Republic of Tajikistan to further improve the social status of women and expand their activities in the economy,” the head of state noted.  

Recall, Emomali Rahmon was reelected on October 11 with 90.92 percent of the vote.  The victory gave him a new seven-year term in office until at least 2027.

Rahmon ran against four largely loyal candidates.