Tajik authorities cannot sell Tajikistan Hotel and the building of head office of Tojisodirotbonk (TSB) in Dushanbe – no one is interested in them.
Over the first six months of this year, the national budget has received 12.1 million somonis through privatization of state-owned property, Saadi Qodirzoda, the head of the State Committee on Investment and Management of State-owned Property (GosKomInvest), told reporters in Dushanbe on August 1.
“Meanwhile, there is very low interest in buying the buildings of head offices of Agroinvestbonk and Tojiksodirotbonk as well as Tajikistan Hotel in Dushanbe,” GosKomInvest head noted.
According to him, some of the banks' property has been sold at 19 auctions, but for everything else here is no buyer yet.
“the buildings of head of offices of these two troubled banks and Tajikistan Hotel will be put up for sale at auction again,” said Qodirzoda. “If it is not possible to sell them, then the buildings can be rented out.”
Radio Ozodi says the sale of the building of the head office of TSB and Tajikistan Hotel was announced on May 25 this year. The starting price for the building of the TSB head office was125,265,630 somonis and the starting price for Tajikistan Hotel was 225,285,624 somonis.
GosKomInvest was reportedly responsible for organization of the auction.
Meanwhile, Asia-Plus failed to find any information about the auction for the mentioned facilities on official websites of GosKomInvest and its subordinate institutions.
GosKomInvest representatives did not say where the announcement of the auction was published.
Recall, TSB and Agroinvestbonk have been experiencing financial problems since the beginning of 2016, and therefore failed to fully meet their obligations to customers.
In 2017, the government provided financial assistance to these banks. Tojiksodirotbonk received a total of 2 billion 250 million somonis, and Agroinvestbonk – 1 billion 70 million somonis.
Tajikistan’s financial regulator revoked their operating licenses on May 21, 2021. The regulator said in a statement on May 21 that TSB and Agroinvestbonk have been wound down because restructuring and recapitalization efforts did nothing to improve their financial situation.
Founded in 1992, Agroinvestbonk, with headquarters in Dushanbe, is now 87.3 percent government-owned as a result of the bailout program. It has main branches in Khorog, Khujand, Kulob and Bokhtar and more than 60 other branches across the republic. In 2012, the government made a decision on recapitalization of Agroinvestbonk and injected 700 million somonis in the bank. 200 million somonis went to replenishing the bank authorized capital stock and 500 million somonis were assigned for the swap.
According to data released by the government, the list of Agroinvestbonk’s assets includes more than 730 objects located in different regions of the country. Among them are the main office of the bank, 60 buildings of its branches, and five service centers. Also, this bank owns recreation areas in the Varzob gorge, various small production facilities, farms, warehouses, gas stations and car services, shopping centers. The list also includes shops, pharmacies, cafes, consumer services centers, numerous apartments and residential buildings.
TSB was established in December 1990 as the Tajik branch of the Vnesh Econom Bank of the former Soviet Union, and it initially specialized in trade and import-export banking. Later this branch was reorganized into a Joint-Stock Commercial Bank “Tajikvnesheconombank”. In June 1999 the bank was renamed and registered as Tojiksodirotbonk or TSB.
Headquartered in Dushanbe, TSB has 11 branches in the main cities of Tajikistan and covers all regions of the country.
The government now owns 85.9 percent of the shares in Tojiksodirotbonk. Before that, 58.89 percent of TSB’s shares had been owned by Closed Joint-Stock Company (CJSC) Evraziya (Eurasia), 11.65 percent by Melodiyon LTD, 10.99 percent by Ehson LTD, 7.38 percent by Media Plyus (Plus) LTD and 1.11 percent by Vostok LTD.
As of May 1, 2018, assets on TSB’s books reportedly include the bank headquarters in Dushanbe, 43 branches across the country, Closed Joint Stock Company (CJSC) Dushanbe Mall (one of Tajikistan’s largest shopping malls, which is home to the country's first ever hypermarket to be part of the French Auchan chain), Tajikistan Hotel in Dushanbe, eight nine-story apartment buildings in Danghara district (Khatlon province), spinning mills in Danghara and Farkhor districts (Khatlon province), cotton ginneries in Khatlon province, and auto-repair enterprise.
As these two major banks are undergoing liquidation, new players appeared in the country’s financial market, including Kommertsbank Tajikistan and International Bank of Tajikistan.
Sources say the background of these players indicated that they enjoyed a considerable advantage in the form of political patronage.
