DUSHANBE, November 24, 2008, Asia-Plus – We have not yet received any instruction from the government to slack off work on construction of the Roghun hydroelectric power station (HPS),” Khairullo Safarov, the head of the capital construction department within the Ministry of Energy and Industries (MoEI), said in an interview with Asia-Plus, commenting on the World Bank specialist’s recommendation for Tajikistan to refrain from large-scale projects.
We will recall that speaking at a press conference in Dushanbe on November 7, World Bank Lead Economist, Mr. Sudarshan Kanagaraja, noted that to avoid problems that may result from the global financial crisis in the future Tajikistan should take a number of efforts. To prevent heavy impact the global crisis could have on Tajikistan it is necessary, in particular, to limit financing of state-control unprofitable industrial enterprises and refrain from large-scale projects, according to him.
“Tajikistan is currently continuing implementation of the Roghun hydroelectricity project on its own,” Safarov said, noting that the construction work has run according to schedule.
Last year, the government allocated 110 million somoni (equivalent to 35 million US dollars) for completing the construction of the Roghun HPS and the national budget for 2009 projects expenditure of 533 million somoni (some US$150 million) on the Roghun hydroelectricity project, the MoEI official said.
Tajikistan has long sought an investor to complete the Roghun dam on the Vakhsh River, some 120 kilometers east of Dushanbe. Construction was launched in 19976 but it was interrupted by the 1992-97 civil war. The country”s fast-flowing mountain rivers have a potential hydropower capacity of 527 billion kilowatt hours a year, among the largest in the world, according to international experts. The 3,600 MWt Roghun hydroelectric power station is to generate 13 billion kWh of electricity per year and energy sales would bring a substantial boon to Tajikistan.
