DUSHANBE, July 27, 2010, Asia-Plus — The concession agreement between the Government of Tajikistan and Innovative Road Solutions (IRS), the private company in charge of the toll road Dushanbe-Chanak, meets all requirements of the country’s legislation, Minister of Transport and Communications Olim Boboyev announced at a news conference in Dushanbe on July 27.
According to him, the government has passed a resolution that lists all facilities that may be handed over under the concession. “Among them are also roads,” the minister said. However, he agreed that the country’s concession law does not provide for handing over highways for management to private companies.
“The government has also endorsed rates for use of the Dushanbe-Chanak highway set by IRS,” Boboyev said.
On the issue that the company has not coordinated its pricing policy with the antimonopoly agency, the minister said, “Government’s resolution is higher than consent of the antimonopoly agency.”
Boboyev refrained from naming the founder of IRS, justifying that by saying that “disclosure of the name of the IRS founder is punished by a large fine.” “This information is a commercial secret of foreign company,” said the minister, “Under international law, disclosure of such information is punished by large fine.”
He stressed that Tajikistan needed the concession agreement with IRS in order to maintain the road and repay the loan to China that financed the rehabilitation of the Dushanbe-Chanak highway. “Tajikistan’s budget cannot afford to allocate enough funds for maintenance of roads,” noted he, “Thus, the national budget for 2010 earmarked little more than 200 million somoni for rehabilitation and operation of roads; of this amount, only 36 million somoni are projected for maintenance of roads.”
We will recall that the highway from Dushanbe to Chanak was recently upgraded by Chinese companies and paid for with a $280 million loan from China. The Tajik government decided that in order to repay the loan to China, a toll would be collected for using the road starting on April 1.
According to some sources, Innovative Road Solutions was registered in the British Virgin Islands. Local experts say the company’s registration in the British Virgin Islands makes it difficult to follow its activities. IRS is exempted from paying more than a dozen different taxes.
Radio Liberty’s Tajik Service reported on July 12 that the IRS technical director, Rustam Abdulloyev, recently said the government gave concessions to his firm and that control of the highway would be returned to the government after an unspecified number of years.
