In a report released at a news conference in Dushanbe, Finance Minister Faiziddin Qahhorzoda revealed on February 16 that the government last year spent 5.2 billion somonis (US$475 million) on construction work at the site for construction of the Roghun hydropower plant, which is 2.7 billion somonis more than had been planned.
The projected government spend for this year, meanwhile, is 5 billion somonis. It is projected that 2.2 billion somonis can be solicited from foreign-based parties, the minister noted.
When work on Roghun, a project that was in its origins the brainchild of Soviet engineers, resumed in earnest in 2008, the estimate for the overall cost stood at US$3 billion.
This climbed upward through the years.
In 2016, officials threw around the figure of US$3.9 billion. In mid-2022, the Energy Ministry announced US$5 billion would be needed for full project implementation.
On February 1, Energy Minister Daler Juma offered a new forecast: US$6.2 billion. That is high, although admittedly quite a bit short of the US$8 billion prognostication he volunteered in an interview to Reuters news agency in June 2022.
The first generating units of the Roghun hydropower plant were introduced into operation in November 2018 and September 2019 to much clamor, but there has been limited progress since then. The third unit is expected to be introduced into operation in 2025.
Once completed, Roghun will be fitted with six 600 megawatt turbines, amounting to a total installed capacity of 3,600 megawatts. Eurasianet notes that as Milan-based WeBuild (formerly Salini Impregilo), which has been contracted to implement the project, has claimed on its website, that is “the equivalent of three nuclear power plants.”
Current annual electricity production in Tajikistan, much of which is accounted for by the Soviet-vintage Nurek hydropower plant, is around 17 billion kilowatt-hours.
Putting this together, it implies that Roghun has, since the first generating unit began working, likely contributed to well under one-tenth of Tajikistan’s electricity output, according to Eurasianet.
