DUSHANBE, July 11, Asia-Plus — On Tuesday July 10, President Emomali Rahmon received Yuri Shafranik, chairman of the board of directors of Russia’s company Soyuzneftgaz.
Their talks focused on the possibility of participation of Russia’s Supreme Mining Council and Interstate Oil Company Soyuzneftgaz in implementation of the investment projects in Tajikistan.
After a meeting with President Rahmon, Shafranik told journalists that he represents Russia’s Supreme Mining Court, which groups all professional miners of the Russian Federation.
According to him, during the meeting, they discussed both opportunities of development of Russian business in Tajikistan and investment projects in implementation of which Tajikistan is interested.
“Besides, I represent the investment group, which operates not only within the CIS area but also in other seven countries across the world,” said Shafranik, “” We have implemented ambitious projects, first of all in the oil-and-gas sector; however, among them are also gold-mining projects, implemented in South Africa.”
He added that his company had also considered the possibility of expanding its operation to Tajikistan as well. “We have sought meeting with Tajik head of state in order to enlist political support for participating in implementation of projects here and we received it,” the Soyuzneftgaz top manager said. Mr. Shafranik refrained from commenting on projects they are interested in, noting that “it will be possible to talk about them when the first tons of oil, cubic meters of natural gas and money appear.”
According to him, they are going to participate in the projects for development of ore deposits, but Tajik president asked them also to consider the possibility of participating in the projects for extraction of oil and natural gas.
“By instruction of President Rahmon our group jointly with relevant bodies of Tajikistan will work on determining conditions of work,” said Shafranik, “If the work conditions prove to be acceptable, it will be possible to make direct investments in an amount of not less than 300 million US dollars in areas we have chosen.”
According to him, the study of the projects may take at least two months. “If we have come here, we are ready to use our investment resources.”
