Prices for basic food products are continuing to rise in Tajikistan and the trend for price rises is stark, according to EurasiaNet.org.

If one kilo of beef cost 32 somoni ($3.80) a month ago, now it costs 40 somoni.  A 50-kilo sack of sugar has gone up from 320 to 375 somoni.  Potatoes by the kilo have increased from 2.6 somoni to 5 somoni.  A kilo of carrots cost 1.2 somoni, now the price has doubled to 2.5 somoni.

The World Food Program noted in its Food Security Monitoring bulletin in February that one-quarter of households questioned in its surveys spend more than 75 percent of their disposable income on food.

“The share of food expenditure seems to have been increasing in both the winter and spring seasons in 2016, while the food expenditure share is highest in the spring,” the WFP said.

Fluctuations in prices for groceries are, on one hand, a seasonal trend contingent on the availability of particular goods, but this particular surge is also linked to performance of the national currency, the somoni.  At the start of the year, the somoni was trading around 7.9 to the dollar, but that had risen to 8.5 somoni by mid-April.

The external support many people could normally count upon has weakened.  Where in 2013, Tajik labor migrants based in Russia had sent home around $4 billion, that figure had dropped to $2 billion by 2016.

EurasiaNet.org says that despite attempts at reassurance by the National Bank of Tajikistan (NBT), the somoni continues to be viewed as unreliable, so people try whenever possible to keep their savings in dollars, which are becoming ever more difficult to find in circulation.

EurasiaNet.org says that according to some sources the troubles of the somoni have also made medicine more expensive.

Another cause for the shortage of dollars is the ongoing problem Tajikistan’s distressed banks.

Market leaders Agroinvestbonk and Tojik Sodirot Bonk (TSB), as well as the now-liquidated Fononbank and Tajprombank, after a long period of withholding savings from their customers, recently began paying out.  They did so exclusively in somoni, even for accounts indexed in dollars.  The flood of fresh somoni on the market caused yet more downward pressure on the currency.

A peripheral effect of this development has led to the almost complete monetization of the payment system.  The habit of paying by card has withered since the bulk of money supply is held physically in people’s wallets and homes.

While some factors buffeting the economy may lie outside government, others are explicitly domestic in nature.  “The deeper the corruption, the higher the prices in the markets,” said economist Samijon Nasriddinov.  “The prices of our groceries are comparable to those in Europe, if not worse.  Sales are in decline, so taxes are paid out of savings. In the expectation of something better, people began to eat through their reserves, and as a result they are left with nothing.”

Meanwhile, the NBT has denied that there is any issue with the currency fluctuations either, remarking in a statement on April 7 that “problems with the shortage of foreign currencies in Tajikistan do not exist.”

“Because of currency exchange speculation, a sense of panic has spread throughout the population, which has ramped up the demand for dollar. Speculators are buying dollars in large quantities in the banks, and they are selling it to the population at inflated levels,” the National Bank said.