DUSHANBE, June 13, Asia-Plus – Over the past two years alone, debts of Tajik Air Carrier “Tojikiston” have amounted to US$14.6 million, Nazira Davlatova, a spokesman for the Tajik national air carrier said.
According to her, the Tajik national air carrier most owes to fuel supply companies. “In the beginning of this month “Tojikiston” company repaid a part of its debt for fuel to the Russian company “Euronet,” Ms Davlatova said, refraining from giving further details of this debt.
Present administration of the Tajik state air company names wrong financial activity of the country’s air enterprise and unprofitability of some international flights as factors contributing to increase in the company’s debts. “The issue of the company’s debts are currently being solved on the governmental level,” the spokeswoman said.
In the meantime, according to information from the country’s antimonopoly agency, experts from the World Bank last week presented in Dushanbe a report on a state of air sector in Tajikistan. The Tajik air carrier top manager Hokimsho Tilloyev, representatives from the antimonopoly agency, international organizations and others attended the report-presenting ceremony. The antimonopoly agency source says that “facts and arguments stated in the report are distressing.”
Mirzo Mastongulov, director general of the Tajik private air company “Somon Air” (the company has already been registered with the Justice Ministry but it has not yet received license from the Civil Aviation Department of the Transport Ministry – Asia-Plus), considers that one of ways out of the difficult situation in the country’s air sector is establishment of two or three private air companies, which could be able to set up an air holding in future. “Establishment of private air company will allow improving the situation in the air sector within six months,” Mr. Mastongulov said.
The State Committee for Management of State-owned Property says that the Tajik national air carrier should submit to the Committee an individual project for restructuring the company by the end of this year. Under this project a number of joint-stock companies will be established on the basis of the “Tojikiston” company. “Both the air carrier’s administration and any juridical or physical entity, including citizens of other countries, will be able to purchase these companies,” the source in State Committee for Management of State-owned Property said.
