Russia issues $5 mln to Tajikistan
By Aynur Jafarova
Russia has allocated $5 million to assist Tajikistan through the World Food Program (WFP), ITAR-TASS reported.
These funds will be used for treatment and nutrition of citizens of 66 Tajik regions.
"This donation will allow the rural communities to establish production facilities which will increase the volume of agricultural production, provide support to health centers in the process of reducing the level of child malnutrition and provide TB patients (and their families) with all necessary tools during their treatment, provide a daily hot meal for 350,000 primary school students and help them to improve the performance of school gardens and garden plots," WFP Tajikistan Country Director Nicolas Oberlin said.
Russia has been making donations to the WFP programs in Tajikistan over the last decade. The total amount of Russian assistance to the country through this line has exceeded $60 million.
The World Bank has said some 47.2 percent of Tajikistan's 8-million-population lives below the poverty line, and the country's GDP per capita amounted to $1,050 in 2013. This is the lowest rate among the former Soviet republics.
Tajikistan ranks 125 out of the 187 countries on the UNDP's 2012 Human Development Index. The majority of the population spends between 60 to 80 percent of their income on food. Access to food is a major challenge, with around one-third of the population affected by food insecurity.
WFP's activities in Tajikistan are aligned with the organization's strategic objectives as well as the UN Development Assistance Framework, the Tajik government's Poverty Reduction Strategy and the UN Millennium Development Goals, eradication of poverty and hunger, universal primary education and the promotion of gender equality.