Two ledgers of one economy were read in Dushanbe within a week of each other. The president's, at the 35th-anniversary assembly on 8 September, runs in somoni and multiples: GDP from 1.8 billion somoni in 2000 to 177 billion in 2025, budget revenue from 252 million to 65 billion, industry to 66.4 billion, poverty from 83% to 19%.
The expert's runs in years. “In 2018, the poverty rate was 27 per cent, down from 67 per cent in 2003”, her statement says, and it cites nothing newer. Youth unemployment “at 27.06 percent in 2024”. A minimum wage raised to 1,300 somoni, $140. Under 9 lawyers per 100,000. Basic food staples up almost 30% in 2020.
Her advice on Rogun is to finance it.
The two sets do not share a year. The president's 19% is the rate he gave the assembly this month; the expert's 27% carries the year 2018 and is the newest she cites. Between them lies a gap of 8 percentage points and 8 years, and the statement's complaint is that the sums which would settle it are not on a public page.
The sentence with a date in it is the one about money. “From 2027, Tajikistan will move from grant-based financing to concessional lending under international development financing arrangements”, the statement says, without naming the arrangement. The shift lands on a budget that carries the dam. Rogun's 2026 financing plan, as the finance minister listed it in February, is at least 10 billion somoni, 8.2 billion of it from the budget, beside $500 million from the AIIB, $150 million from the Islamic Development Bank and $100 million each from the Saudi, Kuwaiti and OPEC funds; the World Bank's second $300 million grant was approved on 30 June inside a 12-institution group whose first-phase plan is $2.97 billion of a $6.29 billion project. Since 2008 the state has put 42.5 billion somoni into the dam, by Fergana's count of 1 July.
Her advice on Rogun is to finance it. The recommendations to Tajikistan's partners include supporting “last-mile projects such as the Dushanbe-Khorog road network and the Roghun Hydropower Plant through financial investment”. The advice to the government is to show the arithmetic: a cost-benefit analysis of every project, disclosure of “accurate, timely, and comprehensive information relating to its budgets, expenditure, debt, and general financial situation”, and a real chance for everyone affected to take part in shaping fiscal policy. Eurasianet's gloss is that critics call the dam potentially wasteful; the expert's own text does not.
The second half of her list reads like a country report by someone who walked its roads. Diversify away from a remittance economy that the World Bank put at 47.9% of GDP in 2025. Treat the free economic zones' tax holidays as a question, since “uncertainty surrounding tax moratoria and preferential regimes in free economic zones may result in inconsistent implementation and make it difficult to determine whether revenue forgone generates additional investment, decent employment and broader development benefits”. Use part of the budget surplus for a revolving fund of small interest-free loans for the poorest. Finish the road links between Dushanbe, Gorno-Badakhshan and China. She visited Dushanbe and Gorno-Badakhshan; the deputy ministers she met came from foreign affairs, education, energy and water, industry and technology; the finance ministry, the National Bank, the Accounts Chamber and the state financial control agency sent officials.
What the two ledgers share is the dam's arithmetic, and what separates them is who may see it. The president's numbers are the state's argument for the years ahead; the expert's are what the state has published, and the newest of them is 8 years old. In 2027 the difference acquires a price. Money that arrives as a grant does not need a cost-benefit page. Money that arrives as a loan, even a concessional one, is repaid by the budget that already carries 8.2 billion somoni of Rogun a year and serviced 2 billion somoni of Eurobond debt in 2025. Her full report goes to the Human Rights Council in March 2027, three months into the year she names.
The document to watch is the one she asked for and the desk has not seen printed: a cost-benefit page for Rogun with the tariff Uzbekistan pays, 3.4 cents a kilowatt-hour under the 20-year contract, set against the 8.2 billion somoni the budget puts in each year. Until it exists, the two ledgers will keep being read in the same city to different audiences.