DUSHANBE, December 11, 2008, Asia-Plus – Barqi Tojik (Tajik electric systems) power holding intends to pay off its debts to open joint-stock company (OJSC) Sangtuda HPP-1 this month, Nozir Yodgori, a spokesman for Barqi Tojik, said in an interview with Asia-Plus.
According to him, they plan to pay off their debts to Sangtuda HPP-1 due to introduction of strict measures against the most incorrigible nonpayers.
“Electricity consumers now owe more than 260 million somoni, equivalent to more than 76.266 million US dollars, to Barqi Tojik; of this amount, 90 million somoni are debts of enterprises of the Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Resources alone,” the spokesman said, noting that if the most incorrigible nonpayers do not pay off their debts within fixed period electricity supplies to them will be cut off.
As it had been reported earlier, administration of OJSC Sangtuda HPP-1 in early December asked Barqi Tojik to pay off its debt of 21.4 million Russian rubles (equivalent to more than 6 million US dollars). According to the Sangtuda HPP-1 director general Rakhmetulla Alzhanov, so far, they have sold electricity to Barqi Tojik at the rate of 1.15 cents per one kWh. “Beginning on January 1 2009, the electricity rate will be raised to 3.1 cents,” Alzhanov said.
We will recall that three of four units of the Sangtuda-1 station have already been introduced into operation and the plant currently generates more than 4 million kWh of electrical power per day.
The construction of the Sangtuda-1 hydropower plant located some 110 kilometers southeast of Dushanbe began in the late 1980s. By the early 1990s, only 20% of the construction work had been completed, and further construction was suspended due to a civil war that broke out in Tajikistan in the early 1990s. The talks between Russia and Tajikistan on completing the construction of the Sangtuda-1 HPP began in 2003 and in 2004 the parties signed an inter-governmental agreement.
Russia retains a 75 percent share in the power plant, which will generate a projected 2.7 billion kWh of electricity per annum. The power station will have an estimated capacity of 670 MW.
