Abstract: As a comparatively backward area of economic development, Xinjiang is in a serious lack of human resource and funds, so increase the total factor productivity is more important to the economic development of Xinjiang. Through a nonparametric Malmquist index approach, this paper has analyzed total factor productivity change in Xinjiang’s economics developments with panel data from 2005 to 2009, which is decomposed into technical efficiency and technical progress. The results show that the average growth rate of Xinjiang’s total factor productivity index from 2005 to 2009 is below 1, which is mainly due to the constraints of technical progress, technical efficiency and scale efficiency. Although the technical progress is growing fast, the negative effect of the decline of technical efficiency and scale efficiency could not be neglected, and this is varying with different place. The decline of technical efficiency hindered the technology progress speed, and new technology introduction in the use efficiency is not high. The emergence of the decline of scale efficiency in different regions particularly shows that the main reason of low technical efficiency is scale diseconomy, which has caused resources waste with plenty of resources for economic growth. Due to different levels of economic development, the emphasis on technological development is varying with different states. The variation of technical efficiency, technical progress and scale efficiency is not exactly the same, all states of Xinjiang could be divided into four types according to whether the pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency is above 1.Therefore, we must not only consider the entirety variation in Xinjiang, but also adopt different tactics according to the characteristics of each area in the regional planning. To increase the total factor productivity of Xinjiang, we should pay attention to enhance technical efficiency, technological progress level and scale efficiency at the same time. The growth of total factor productivity is limited if depending solely on one aspect.

Key words: total factor productivity, technical progress, technical efficiency, Malmquist index