Worlds apart? The World Bank’s business rankings and small entrepreneurship in Tajikistan

ABSTRACT

This article contrasts the World Bank’s policy-oriented, standardized assessment of the business climate and small business in Tajikistan with an alternative, bottom-up reading of local entrepreneurship focused on the life stories and business experiences of the young Tajik business community. It shows that the World Bank’s business evaluations and rankings, Doing Business and Enterprise Survey, offer a top-down understanding of business in this post-Soviet Central Asian country, which is filtered through an underlying neoliberal policy paradigm. This paradigm promotes economic liberalization, rivalry and individual responsibility for wellbeing at the expense of a welfare state, solidarity and common interest. The article proposes a different account which is centered on the socio-economic, political and moral embeddedness of local business practices. Four aspects of doing business are analyzed: informality, the role of the state in regulating business, bribing, and the relevance of social networks. Such an alternative, ethnographically informed account is needed because this organization’s publications are seen by policymakers as an authoritative source of knowledge and, as a result, serve as a powerful global governance tool influencing economic reforms worldwide. These reforms, however, often exercise a negative effect on local economic lifeworlds. 

KEYWORDS:

• Business
• former Soviet Union
• global governance
• knowledge production
• Tajikistan
• World Bank

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to two anonymous reviewers for detailed comments and helpful suggestions how to improve this article. I also thank Kristin Eggeling, Rick Fawn and Matteo Fumagalli for their comments on earlier drafts. I am indebted to all interviewees for generously sharing with me their experiences of doing business in Tajikistan.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Interviews

1 Murod, a 26-year-old businessman, 8 December 2016

2 Aziz, a 30-year-old businessman, 9 December 2016

3 Rustam, a 30-year-old businessman, 10 March 2017

4 Behruz, a 30-year-old businessman, 14 March 2017

5 Yusuf, a 26-year-old businessman, 3 April 2017

6 Sino, a 30-year-old businessman, 18 April 2017

7 Bakhtior, a 33-year-old businessman, 12 May 2017

8 Umed, a 28-year-old businessman, 15 May 2017

9 Shavkat, a 29-year-old businessman, 2 June 2017

10 Mahina, a 29-year-old businesswoman, 2 June 2017

11 Madina, a 30-year-old businesswoman, 6 June 2017

12 Nargis, a 26-year-old businesswoman, 6 June 2017

13 Daler, a 27-year-old businessman, 10 June 2017

14 Ilkhom, a 30-year-old businessman, 11 June 2017

15 Ravshan, a 32-year-old businessman, 14 June 2017

16 Maxim, a 33-year-old businessman, 9 July 2017

17 Nasiba, a 32-year-old businesswoman, 17 July 2017

18 Olim, a 27-year-old businessman, 27 August 2017

19 A former employee of World Bank in Tajikistan, 1 June 2017

20 A former employee of IFC in Tajikistan, 19 June 2017

21 A former employee of IFC in Tajikistan, 9 July 2017

22 A former employee of IFC in Tajikistan, 10 July 2017

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. See: The World Bank in Tajikistan. Strategy. Other fields include energy, water, agriculture, education, health and transport. Accessed 10 April 2020. https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/tajikistan/overview#2

2. Speech of Umed Davlatzoda, Deputy Minister of Industry and New Technologies of the Republic of Tajikistan. International Entrepreneurship Forum 2017 “Development of Local Production”, Dushanbe, 14 October 2016.

3. Speech of Sobir Vazirov, the Head of the Department of Tax Administration Development of the Tax Committee of the Republic of Tajikistan. Club of Young Entrepreneurs, presentation “Paying Income Tax and Mechanisms of Complaints for Taxpayers”, Dushanbe, 19 April 2017.

4. The World Bank in Tajikistan. Strategy. Accessed 10 April 2020. https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/tajikistan/overview#2

5. See Putniņš and Sauka (2015) for an overview of micro, macro and alternative methods of estimating the dimensions of shadow economy, as well as types and functions of involved actors.

6. This influence can be also observed in many other spheres, including state regulation of dress, students’ regular voluntary-mandatory involvement in state nation-building festivities or citizens’ mobilization to buy the Roghun dam shares in 2010 to facilitate its construction.

7. Spatialized solidarity circles like mahalla (neighborhood), venues to solve local problems, such as choykhona (teahouse), or local practices of solidarity, including hashar (voluntary collective communal work) and kori khayr (charitable giving).

8. Business Reforms in Tajikistan. Accessed 10 April 2020. http://www.doingbusiness.org/reforms/overview/economy/tajikistan

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Commission, project “Around the Caspian” under grant [SEP-210161673]; “Tomsk State University Competitiveness Improvement Programme” under grant [8.1.27.2018]; and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Collaborative Research Center SFB/TRR 138 “Dynamics of Security” under grant [227068724]