Another tax relief has been given to the Roghun hydropower project. The Majlisi Namoyandagon (Tajikistan’s lower chamber of parliament) today approved amendments offered by the government the country’s law on the national budget for 2019.
The amendments, in particular, provide for exempting the Swiss company, Owen Energy Ltd, which is constructing embankment protection works at the site for construction of the Roghun hydroelectric power plant (HPP) from paying value added tax (VAT) and customs duties.
The Tajik side will pay the Swiss company 9.4 million U.S. dollars for construction of the embankment protection works at the Roghun site.
Roghun Dam is an embankment dam under construction on the Vakhsh River in southern Tajikistan. The dam is situated 110 kilometers from Dushanbe. It is one of the planned hydroelectric power plants of Vakhsh Cascade.
Construction of the dam began in the Soviet era, in 1976, but was abandoned after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Over three decades only preliminary construction has been carried out on the dam. Due to its controversial state, construction was suspended in August 2012 pending World Bank reports. The project was restarted by the Tajik government in 2017. The power plant's first unit was commissioned in November 2018 and the second unit is expected to be commissioned in September this year.
Currently standing at 90 meters high, enough to begin generating electricity, the Roghun dam will ultimately reach a height of 335 meters and be the world's tallest rock-fill dam.
