President Emomali Rahmon received the Vice President of the Asian Development Bank Wenkai Zhang.

The meeting discussed issues of supporting socio-economic development of Tajikistan, especially in the field of reducing the negative impact of external factors of crisis.

It was stressed that for the first month of this year, GDP growth was 5.1% in Tajikistan, which is for 2 percentage points lower than the same period of last year.

W. Zhang noted that the Asian Development Bank will continue to support the sustainable economic development of Tajikistan, including the effective implementation of measures of the Government of the country to prevent the impact of possible threats to the national economy.

It was noted with satisfaction that during the years of cooperation with the Asian Development Bank Tajikistan was provided about 1.3 billion US dollars of preferential loans, grants and technical assistance. Currently, underway are various projects in the fields of energy, transport, public finance, which total more than 600 million US dollars.

A constructive discussion was held on the draft five-year strategy for cooperation between Tajikistan and the Asian Development Bank for the years 2016-2020, which includes the issues of improving road networks, energy and food security, access to clean water and social services, private sector development and regional cooperation.

President Emomali Rahmon expressed gratitude to the Asian Development Bank for their continued support, especially for the support of the railway project Tajikistan-Afghanistan-Turkmenistan.

It was expressed confidence that the other proposed projects will also be supported and implemented in stages.