DUSHANBE, August 10, Asia-Plus — Tajik-Cypriot JV TajikAzot has temporarily suspended its activity.
According to the company administration, the reason for suspension is lack of market for realizing the company’s product. The TajikAzot top managers say high domestic natural-gas prices have hurt the enterprise, which works on natural gas.
The company now purchases natural gas from Tojikgaz (Tajik natural-gas distributor) at the rate of $121 per 1,000 cubic meters that has led to a nearly 100 percent increase in prices of TajikAzot’s main product – carbamide – from $150 to $298 per ton. “This has put us at a disadvantage, because many our competitors, including Turkmen and Uzbek companies, realize carbamide on the Tajik market at rate of $200 per ton,” the source at the TajikAzot said.
Moreover, because of this serious situation TajikAzot’s contract with one of its main customers, Iran’s Zalvand Trading, is under threat of break-down, the TajikAzot top manager Tohirkhon Ghoziyev said. Under the contract, TajikAzot has pledged to supply 100,000 tons of carbamide to Iran this year. “So far, we have managed to supplied only 2,500 tons of carbamide to Iran,” Ghoziyev said.
According to specialists from TajikAzot, it is not profitable for Iran to purchase expensive carbamide from Tajikistan, while it can purchase it at lower prices from the neighboring countries.
Over the past seven months, TajikAzot has produced only some 30,000 tons of carbamide.
However, the TajikAzot commercial director Umed Sharipov believes that suspension will not be long. “We are currently seeking way out of the situation and I think the enterprise will resume its activity already this month,” Sharipov said.
The closed joint-stock company TajikAzot is the joint venture launched in cooperation with Cypriot company Highrock Holding Limited in March 2002. The JV was established on the basis of the plant for producing mineral fertilizers that was constructed in Sarband in 1964.
Tajikistan owns 20 percent of the shares and the Cypriot company assumes the 80 percent ownership interest in TajikAzot.
