Russia, Tajikistan open power plant to ease energy crisis

TAJIKISTAN: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev inaugurated Friday a major hydroelectric plant in Tajikistan aimed at easing the ex-Soviet state’s energy crisis and bolstering Moscow’s influence.

The Sangtudinskaya plant, located 200 kilometres (120 miles) south of the Tajik capital Dushanbe, is set to provide 12 percent of the resource-poor Central Asian country’s total energy production.

“This is without doubt a joyful event for all of our people. This is proof of the fruitfulness of our bilateral relations,” Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon said at the ceremony at the plant alongside Medvedev.

“This is certainly the most important step in the cooperation between our countries,” Medvedev added.

The power plant — a Soviet-era project whose creation was only formally agreed in 2004 — was built at a cost of 720 million dollars and is by far the biggest Russian-Tajik project of recent times.

The Russian government owns a majority stake in the project. The plant started producing energy in January 2008 and has been stepping up output since.

With few fossil fuel reserves, Tajikistan suffers major energy problems, especially in winter when blackouts are frequent even in Dushanbe and electricity only goes on for around one hour a day in villages.

However the mountainous country contains considerable potential for hydroelectric power.

Despite the warm words of the presidents, there have been concerns in Moscow about Rakhmon’s increasingly independently-minded behaviour as he looks to improve his impoverished state’s financial situation.

Russian media has reported that Tajikistan wanted Russia to start paying for a military base it maintains in the country and to pull out Russian border guards stationed on Tajik territory.

Russia’s 201st base, set up in 2005, is made up of 5,500 soldiers and officers and has the aim of helping maintain stability in Central Asia and providing support for Tajik troops.

There have also been concerns in Moscow that moves by Rakhmon to promote the country’s main language Tajik — a dialect of Persian written with the Cyrillic alphabet — do not come at the expense of the status of Russian.

Sangtuda, Sunday, AFP