DUSHANBE, December 19, 2012, Asia-Plus — Barqi Tojik power holding (Tajik electricity supplier) now owes 308.5 million somoni (equivalent to US$64.5 million) to open joint-stock company (OJSC) Sangtudinskaya GES-1 that operates the Sangtuda-1 hydroelectric power plant (HPP), according to OJSC Sangtudinskaya GES-1.
Over the first eleven moths of this year, the station has reportedly generated 1.6 billion kWh of electrical power. “Over the report period Barqi Tojik has paid only 41 percent of the total amount,” a source at Sangtudinskaya GES-1 said.
Barqi Tojik has refrained from commenting on the debt situation but representative of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade said that the government had guaranteed that Barqi Tojik’s debts would be repaid gradually.
Meanwhile the Sangtudinskaya GES-1 press center reports that 8.3 billion kWh of electricity for a total amount of 706 million somoni have been sold to Tajikistan since January 20, 2008, when the first unit of the Sangtuda-1 HPP was introduced into operation.
We will recall that Tajik and Russian presidents officially unveiled the fourth and last unit of the Sangtuda-1 HPP on July 31, 2009.
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.
Russian-Tajik OJSC Sangtudinskaya GES-1 was established to complete the construction of the Santuda-1 power plant. Russia’s Inter RAO YeES and the Ministry of Energy and Industries of Tajikistan signed an agreement on the establishment of the company in Dushanbe on February 16, 2005.
Russia owns 75% percent of the shares minus one share and Tajikistan assumes the 25% ownership interest plus one share in Sangtudinskaya GES-1.
