FIDIC in Tajikistan: donor projects and Law No. 1955

Tajikistan is the third country in the region by number of World Bank works notices. It has no national requirement to use FIDIC: the donor brings the form, and with it the procedural discipline that local practice is not always set up for.

Where FIDIC comes from

FIDIC contracts in Tajikistan are almost entirely projects of the international financial institutions — the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, EBRD and the Islamic Development Bank. Their procurement rules require FIDIC-based works documents, usually the Pink Book or adapted Red and Yellow Books.

A concrete example: on ADB-financed road projects the supervision consultancy is procured with explicit reference to engineering supervision in accordance with FIDIC — including design, build and maintain contracts on a results-based approach.

On purely budget-financed works, FIDIC barely appears.

Law No. 1955

Public procurement is governed by Law of the Republic of Tajikistan No. 1955 of 15 March 2023 on Public Procurement, which replaced the earlier Law on Public Procurement of Goods, Works and Services and sets out the organisational, legal and economic basis of the procurement system. The competent authority is the Agency for Public Procurement of Goods, Works and Services under the Government of the Republic of Tajikistan.

For FIDIC projects the working framework matches Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan: where a development bank finances the project, the loan agreement and the bank’s procurement rules set the procedure and the evaluation criteria. The national regime does not vanish — reporting, tax, permitting and registration requirements stay — but the donor defines the tender.

The general logic is covered in FIDIC and public procurement.

What is actually procured

By our procurement archive, the World Bank works portfolio in Tajikistan reaches well beyond roads:

• early childhood and school infrastructure — the largest block by notice count;
• rural water supply and sanitation;
• water resources and irrigation;
• agricultural climate resilience;
• health facilities;
• socio-economic resilience works.

That profile means many relatively small works packages spread across districts rather than a handful of large corridor contracts. For a contractor the bid economics are different: tendering costs scale badly to small lots, and it is worth deciding in advance whether participation pays.

The road corridors — the Dushanbe–Kyrgyz border rehabilitation and the CAREC programme — run through ADB, whose notices do not reach this archive because ADB blocks automated requests. The tenders page states that limit openly.

Where administration breaks down

Claim deadlines. The 28 days under Sub-Clause 20.2.1 is a time-bar: missing it can forfeit the claim entirely, however meritorious. On projects with multilingual correspondence routed through a PIU, the start point blurs faster than anywhere else. Time runs from awareness, not from delivery of the paperwork.

Work out the actual dates with the time-bar calculator.

The Engineer’s role. Where the supervision consultant is budgeted as technical supervision but obliged as a FIDIC Engineer, the gap is absorbed by the quality of administration: determinations under Sub-Clause 3.7 come late, and Clause 20 turns over without engaging. See the Engineer’s role.

DAAB. Provided for in the Contract Data, never constituted, never funded — the usual picture. Clause 21 exists; the dispute ladder does not.

Records. Contemporary records are kept worst on small distributed packages, and without them a claim cannot be proved. See substantiating claims with records.

What to check before bidding

• which book, and who is responsible for design — Book Selector;
• Contract Data and Section VIII complete, how to read it;
• whether Sub-Clause 4.12 survives;
• whether Clause 20 has been hollowed out;
• whether the DAAB is constituted and budgeted;
• securities: the bank’s forms and whether a local bank will issue them;
• delay damages and whether there is a cap;
• payment currency and price adjustment under Clause 13;
• the bank’s ESHS obligations — what they require;
• governing law and seat of arbitration.

Screen the package with the Tender Risk Lab; draft questions with the clarification generator.

Tajikistan against its neighbours

The practical upshot: in Tajikistan the question before bidding is not “which book” but “does a lot this size justify this much procedural load”. FIDIC and the bank ask the same of a two-million contract as of a forty-million one.

Sources and further reading

• Law of the Republic of Tajikistan No. 1955 of 15 March 2023 on Public Procurement — adlia.tj.
• Agency for Public Procurement of Goods, Works and Services under the Government of the Republic of Tajikistan — zakupki.gov.tj.
• Procurement data: World Bank Procurement Notices, Tajikistan archive, CC BY 4.0.
• FIDIC, MDB Harmonised Construction Contract (Pink Book), 2017 edition.
• See also: FIDIC in Kyrgyzstan, FIDIC in Uzbekistan, FIDIC on MDB projects.

Legal references are stated as at August 2026. This is an overview, not a legal opinion: check the current version of the law and the terms of the actual loan agreement before relying on it.