Tea and Chapoti
Can you imagine that in Dushanbe one kilo of flesh-meat in the supermarkets costs 22 somoni (about 6,4 USD) and in the local markets meat with bones costs 14 somoni (about 4 USD)? Also, one bag of flour (50 kilos) costs 75 somoni (about 21 USD).
Even during the harshest economic crisis Tajiks always have tea and chapoti. Chapoti is a traditional flat brad or in other words lavash. If a Tajik eats only tea and chapoti the whole day, it means that his economic situation is very bad. People ironically say that most of the Tajik people are now forced to eat only tea and chapoti due to the dramatic increase in prices for food.
The increase of prices is just scaring and the government can not do anything. When Emomali Rahmon during the government session gave hard time to high officials who were not aware of the problem, there appeared some hopes among the population that the situation is going to be normalized. But nothing have changed yet.
The mayor of Dushanbe found a reason to the problem and decided to get rid of it. He dismissed the heads of major local markets (bazaars) (rus), which have a great influence on formation of prices in the whole city. However, this did not solve the problem the prices are still high and no one knows what to do.
Some experts say that the prices went up due to the upcoming Islamic holiday “Holy Ramadan”, others say that the number of intermediaries between the farmers and the customers is so high that by the time the product produced by a farmer reaches the consumer the price increases several folds and becomes unjustifiably expensive.
on August 8th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
It is called free market and there is virtually nothing any government can do to curb it…
Seeing firing of bazar heads is very short sighted (unless they were charging extremely large margins). This is called cartel price fixing and is illegal in developed countries.
But overall the government should look at its fiscal and monetary policies to curb inflation.
It is quite hilarious that officials responsible did not know about price increases, but not untrue. I have yet to see a high-ranking official who actually pays for his grocieries or his everyday expenses.
With these kinds of “fringe benefits” I am not really surprised to learn that quite a few Tajik students studying in the US aspire to get a job in the government and this is plain wrong.
We have a loooong way to learn about how to manage our economy.