DUSHANBE, January 22, Asia-Plus – Trade between Russia and Tajikistan in 2007 rose 75.2% year on year reaching $857 million, the Tajik foreign minister said on Monday.
Russia is Tajikistan”s major strategic and trade partner, Hamrokhon Zarifi said, adding the two countries shared “strategic and economic interests.”
Russia and Tajikistan are members of the Eurasian Economic Community (Eurasec), an international economic organization, also comprising Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a regional group largely seen as a counterweight to U.S. influence in Asia.
The SCO also comprises China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and has Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia as observers.
Zarifi called the completion by Russia”s electricity monopoly Unified Energy System (UES) of the first unit of the Sangtuda-1 hydropower plant on Sunday further proof of the close strategic ties between the two countries.
The construction of the Sangtuda-1 hydropower plant located some 110 km (68 miles) southeast of Dushanbe began in the late 1980s. By the early 1990s, only 20% of the construction work had been completed, and further construction was suspended due to a civil war that broke out in the ex-Soviet Central Asian republic immediately after it declared its independence in 1992.
The talks between Russia and Tajikistan on completing the construction of the Sangtuda-1 HPP began in 2003 and in 2004 the parties signed an inter-governmental agreement under which the project was estimated at $720 million.
The first power unit has a capacity of 167.5 MW. The Sangtuda-1 HPP is expected to be put into operation in late 2008-early 2009. The HPP will have a total capacity of 670 MW.
