DUSHANBE, January 27, 2009, Asia-Plus — Speaking to reporters in Dushanbe on January 26, Deputy Energy and Industries Minister, Mahmadsharif Haqdodov, said Tajik-Iranian joint venture for assembling tractors, TojIron, intends to arrange production harvesters.
According to him, the enterprise intends to produce the first harvester in the near future.
“In 2008, TojIron assembled 70 tractors TojIron-285; 67 of them were realized the same year,” said the deputy minister, “The enterprise now have 20 other tractors for sale.”
TojIron now operates in Dushanbe. It started operating with the capital of $10 million in September 2006 but failed to bear fruits due to lack of financial support as well as red tapes in importing tractor parts from Iran. The enterprise has the capacity to assemble up to 2,000 tractors a year. TojIron was created by an agreement between Tajik industries minister and the Iranian ambassador to Tajikistan in Dushanbe in June 2006. Under the agreement Tajikistan owns 49 percent of the shares and Iran holds a 51% ownership interest in the company.
We will recall that head of Iranian state-run company dealing with production of agricultural machines stated in Dushanbe last November that they intend to launch a harvester-producing enterprise in Tajikistan. In a report released at a press conference in Dushanbe, Hamid Reza Sultani, top manager of the limited liability company Agrotech Khorasan, revealed on November 4, 2008 that Iranian harvesters had been successfully tested in Tajikistan over the past two years. Sultani added that representatives of the Iranian harvester-producing company had conducted negotiations with representatives of Tajik Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) on launching the harvest-producing enterprises in Tajikistan.
