Tajikistan has created a Tourism Development Fund financed in part by a payment of 5 percent of the sale value of tour packages sold to Tajik citizens travelling abroad. The resolution was adopted on July 1 but publicized only in late August.

The new rules open a dedicated account at the Ministry of Finance’s Central Treasury. Listed sources also include a per-day charge on foreign visitors’ packages, permit fees, fines, deposit income, and grants from international financial institutions. Spending is authorized by a 13-member council chaired by the head of the Committee for Tourism Development, alongside deputy ministers, agency heads, and one private sector representative.

For inbound visitors the charge is negligible: 0.2 of the annual calculation indicator per 24-hour period in hotels and 0.15 in guesthouses, or 15.6 and 11.7 somoni ($1.70 and $1.30) at the 2026 indicator of 78 somoni. The outbound payment is where the revenue is, and it reaches most of the tourism industry. Of 191 registered tourism companies, the committee counts 75 to 84 in inbound work and only around 30 active companies. Most of the remainder primarily arrange trips abroad for Tajik citizens.

Because the payment is calculated on the package’s sale price rather than the tourism agency’s commission, the tax is imposed on the transaction’s gross value, not the agency’s margin. On an illustrative 20,000 somoni package the payment is 1,000 somoni, roughly a third of the 3,194 somoni average monthly wage reported in June. Sellers will either absorb that fee, raise prices, or restructure sales. 

“We haven’t done final math on the implications of this new tax for us, but it is not a development we’re happy about,” the head of a well-established Dushanbe-based tourism company told The Diplomat on condition of anonymity. “Our margins are thin as it is and now we might have to rethink our entire business model.”

On the published wording the payment targets packages sold by tourism companies. If separately booked flights, hotel rooms, and insurance fall outside the definition of a taxable package, the rules could create an incentive to unbundle trips or shift bookings to foreign platforms, disadvantaging licensed Tajik tourism companies and leaving them with compliance burden.

The rules do build in safeguards – the council reviews targeted use of funds and audit reports, the committee reports to the government twice a year, and annual activity information is to be published. But the council is chaired by the head of the agency whose staff also serve as its secretariat and disclosure is annual rather than transaction-level. The rules specify only one private-sector representative and do not identify an independent civil-society or external oversight member.

Asia-Plus reported that 30 percent of monthly receipts will be transferred automatically to an “Information Center of Tourism Services” for operational measures and incentives for sector employees, with no stated allocation criteria.

Kazakhstan’s outbound tourism mechanism creates a direct traveler entitlement: Kazakh operators pay into Turistik Qamqor, a fund whose stated sole purpose is returning Kazakh travelers home when an operator fails, with each traveler issued a code that triggers the guarantee. Tajikistan’s rules set out no equivalent right for travelers.

The fund arrives as the government is highlighting both growth and strain. Tajikistan recorded 1.063 million foreign entrants in the first half of 2026, of whom 889,400 were classified as foreign tourists (a narrower category than total foreign entries), up 16.7 percent. Committee Chairman Jamshed Jurakhonzoda has said border crossings cannot absorb the flow, sanitation along the main highways is poor, mobile coverage fails in the mountains, and trained guides are scarce. 

The government has already committed more than 270 million somoni to its 2027-2030 tourism strategy. Of that earmarked amount, 60.9 million (or 22 percent) comes from the state budget, a quarter is provided by development partners and international institutions, and 143.6 million or over half is expected from the private sector. No revenue estimate has been published for the new levy, which will be drawn largely from Tajiks buying their way out of the country where the government is simultaneously asking private tourism businesses to finance more than half of its next tourism strategy.