DUSHANBE, July 31, 2009, Asia-Plus — Today morning, President Emomali Rahmon and his Russian counterpart, President Dmitry Medvedev, attended a solemn ceremony of an official commissioning of the Sangtuda-1 hydroelectric power plant (HPP) on the Vakhsh River in Khatlon province.
Addressing the ceremony, Rahmon named the station the symbol of Tajik-Russian friendship. “Construction of this power plant is evidence of a fruitful bilateral cooperation between the two countries,” Tajik leader said.
Rahmon congratulated Tajik people on this important event and expressed gratitude to the Russian president, government and builders that had made today’s event possible.
“This facility is of significant importance for the whole Tajik people,” said the Tajik president, “This power plant increases the daily generation of electrical power in Tajikistan by 8 million kWh and will allow partially solving the problem of electricity shortages during autumn-winter period.”
He added that introduction of that facility into operation was an important event not only for residents of Tajikistan but also for residents of the region as whole because it would promote regulation of water resources in the region. “We have never worked and will never work to the detriment of our neighbors,” Rahmon said.
For his part, President Medvedev noted that construction of the Sangtuda-1 HPP had given a new impulse to further expansion of bilateral cooperation between the two countries.
He stressed that Russian-Tajik mutually beneficial cooperation was developing dynamically. “Besides those numerous projects, on implementation of which we are working, new projects are being developed in the field of hydropower engineering and exploration of gas fields,” said Medvedev, “We have large potential for cooperation and we should use this potential to the maximum.”
We will recall that the first unit of the Sangtuda-1 station was introduced into operation on January 20, 2008. During 2008, the second and the third units of the plant were also introduced into operation on July 1 and November 6 respectively. And the last fourth unit was put into operation in May this year.
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 generates a projected 2.7 billion kWh of electricity per annum. The power station has an estimated capacity of 670 MW.
