Electricity generated by power plants is quite enough to meet the country’s requirements in electric power but electricity losses are very large.
President Emomali Rahmon remarked this today during an address to a joint session of both chambers of the country’s parliament.
According to him, Tajikistan last year generated 21 billion kWh of electricity. “The generated electricity is enough but electricity losses are very large,” the head of state said noting that electricity losses were estimated at 16 percent of total annual electricity generation.
Recall, residential customers in rural areas now have no electricity from 11 p.m. until 6 a.m. due to power rationing that was reintroduced in the country on January 5.
Tajikistan desperately needs to reform its energy sector. In 2013, over 10 percent of Tajikistan’s enterprises reportedly considered unreliable electricity supply as a major constraint to doing business in the country. In 2019, the share of local enterprises who considered unreliable electricity supply as a major constraint to doing business reportedly fell down to 8.4 percent, still significantly above the average of 3.8 percent across Europe and Central Asia.
Under the pressure from international donors, the Tajik government committed to slowly reform Barqi Tojik (Tajikistan’s national power utility company). The government has initiated optimization of the organizational structure of the utility by unbundling it into separate electricity generation, transmission, and distribution companies, and is gradually raising the electricity tariffs. Additional limited investments are being made into upgrading the country’s transmission lines. But while agreeing to these reforms on paper, the Tajik government has been reluctant to act on them fully and has been diverting most of its efforts towards increasing its energy exports as a way out of its current revenue dilemma.
