Tajik President Emomali Rahmon left Astana on November 7 with a framework settlement on petroleum product provides and a roadmap to increase bilateral commerce by 2030. Kazakhstan’s gasoline deliveries to Tajikistan fell by two-thirds within the first 9 months of the yr, a sign of the hole between diplomatic commitments and the provides out there.
Rahmon’s three-day official go to produced a joint assertion on cooperation priorities and 14 intergovernmental and interagency paperwork, together with agreements on electrical energy, mining and metallurgy, well being care, and pension information sharing, an agricultural roadmap for 2027-2028, and memorandums on synthetic intelligence and e-commerce. Kazakhstan may also practice personnel for the border troops of Tajikistan’s State Committee for Nationwide Safety and will again Tajikistan’s first-ever bid for a non-permanent U.N. Safety Council seat in 2028-2029, a race towards India. The go to builds on the Treaty on Allied Relations signed in Dushanbe in August 2024, which Tokayev ratified in Might 2026. A enterprise discussion board held on the day of Rahmon’s arrival produced 11 introduced business agreements price $135.3 million.
Tokayev instructed reporters that bilateral commerce is “confidently approaching” $2 billion. That ambition stays above the most recent reported totals: $1.13 billion in January-September 2026, with Rahmon citing development of nearly 26 % year-on-year. The commerce between the 2 nations is hardly balanced, nevertheless. Tajikistan buys as much as 1 million tons of Kazakh grain a yr and in addition imports Kazakh flour, liquefied gasoline, and aluminum oxide, whereas greater than 80 % of Tajik fruit and vegetable exports went to Kazakhstan as of 2024. In January-Might 2025, Tajik exports to Kazakhstan totaled simply $31.3 million towards $450.1 million in imports. In January-September 2026, Kazakhstan equipped 12.5 % of Tajikistan’s imports, behind China and Russia.
The gasoline framework targets Tajikistan’s most acute vulnerability. Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries and Moscow’s fuel-export restrictions disrupted the regional provide system this yr. Though deliveries beneath intergovernmental agreements have been formally exempt from Russia’s export bans, Tajikistan nonetheless confronted provide difficulties, and several other Dushanbe filling stations ran out of diesel in July. Tajik customs information reported by Reuters present that Russian deliveries fell 10.8 % in January-September, to 708,000 tons, chopping Russia’s share of Tajik petroleum-product imports from 88.4 % to 77.2 %. Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Iran coated a lot of the shortfall, and complete import quantity nonetheless rose 2.2 %. Kazakhstan restricted its personal gasoline exports to guard its home market and thus deliveries fell from 27,100 to 9,100 tons, or 1 % of Tajikistan’s petroleum product imports by quantity.
The electrical energy settlement factors to Astana’s pursuits. Kazakhstan has sought since 2023 to purchase energy from Tajikistan’s Rogun hydropower plant to cowl deficit hours in its grid, with deliveries routed by Uzbekistan. A draft accredited by the Kazakh authorities in April 2025 envisaged a 20-year association, with provide conditional on neighbors’ transit capability; whether or not these phrases are literally within the signed textual content has not been disclosed. Development on Rogun started in 1976 and has been repeatedly interrupted; after 50 years, the hydropower mission at the moment has two models working at low capability. Export contracts with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are central to financing the dam’s completion. Tajikistan’s recurring winter shortages complicate exports, however don’t rule them out.
Rahmon’s Kazakhstan go to matches Dushanbe’s broader goals of diversification. China accounted for 28 % of Tajikistan’s imports and 30.5 % of its exports in January-September 2026, in keeping with the Tajik Statistics Company, and Rahmon signed a everlasting friendship treaty in Beijing in Might. Eurasianet reported that work-purpose entries by Central Asian residents into Russia fell roughly 15 % within the first half of 2026, and Kazakhstan is rising as a substitute for Tajik migrants. Kazakhstan will help diversify Tajikistan’s financial relationships, however on gasoline its instant position is marginal subsequent to Russia’s. It’s telling that the printed summaries of the brand new gasoline framework don’t specify volumes, merchandise, or supply dates.