DUSHANBE, October 22, 2010, Asia-Plus  -- Work to process data of the 2010 population and housing census that was held in Tajikistan from September 21 to September 30 will start on November 5, Ms. Bakhtiya Muhammadiyeva, the director of the Agency for Statistics under the President of Tajikistan, announced at a news conference in Dushanbe today.

“The Agency for Statistics in a close cooperation with an international company, ABBYY, uses scanning method,” Muhammadiyeva said, noting that the scanning method is used in Tajikistan for the first time.

According to her, the preliminary data are expected to be published in April or May 2011 and the final findings will be published in 2013.  She reminded that 27 million somoni had been allocated from the national budget for the 2010 population and housing census and more than 34,000 people, including observers, consultants and others, had been involved in conducting the population census.  The census of housing was conducted in Tajikistan for the first time.

For Tajikistan, it was the ninth population census (In Tajikistan, the previous census was conducted in 2000).

We will recall that Ms. Muhammadiyeva told reporters on July 23 that as of April 1, 2010, Tajikistan’s population was 7.562 million.

Population growth rate (PGR) is quite high in Tajikistan.  The country’s population rose from some 1.1 million in 1929 to 3.801 million in 1979; in 1999, Tajikistan’s population was more than 6.3 million.  UNFPA specialists expect Tajikistan’s population to rise to 11.8 million by 2025.