DUSHANBE, October 8, 2008, Asia-Plus — Representatives of the Tajik government today met with visiting specialists from the World Bank (WB) at the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade (MoEDT) in Dushanbe to discuss issues related to completing construction of the Roghun hydroelectric power station (HPS) in Tajikistan.
The source at a MoEDT said that speaking at the meeting, Raghuveer Sharma, the World Bank’s Lead Financial Analyst and Central Asian Energy Program Team Leader, noted that the WB experts had conducted consultations on completing the construction of the Roghun HPS with Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
According to Mr. Sharma, in the course of consultations, representatives of Turkmenistan emphasized the importance of completion of the construction of the Roghun HPS and noted that Tajikistan has full authority to construct the station.
Representatives of Kazakhstan were interested in capacity of the station, the electricity generation volumes and the volume of import of electrical power that will be generated by the Roghun HPS.
Kyrgyzstan has fully backed Tajikistan’s plan to construct the Roghun HPS.
Afghanistan has no objections to the Roghun hydroelectricity project and noted that it had singed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Tajikistan on construction of the Dashtijum hydroelectric power plant on the Panj River.
Mr. Sharma noted that the World Bank has not yet conducted consultations with Uzbekistan. Consultations with the Uzbek side are supposed to be conducted in late October.
First Deputy Prime Minister, Asadullo Ghulomov, heading the government group at this meeting, noted that environmental diligence aspects had been taken into account during development of the Roghun hydroelectricity project in the Soviet time already. According to him, if there are any questions on these aspects, Tajikistan is ready to discuss them at any level.
The first deputy prime minister asked the WB experts to assess the social and ecological aspects of the project.
Energy is the topical issue in Tajikistan as the Tajiks have still very much in mind last winter freezing temperatures, coupled with an obsolete national power system that hardly coped with the country’s growing energy needs. Tajikistan is experiencing energy problems every winter due to increased demand from population for heating purposes, limited generation capacity and little investment in the existing energy infrastructure since independence.
