According to the Tajik Meteorological Service, this winter in Tajikistan is the harshest during the last 25 years. The situation is critical – practically, the whole infrastructure is in stagnation. Most of schools are dormant; it is very cold medical institutions. The government convenes extraordinary meetings, but the situation may change only in spring – it will get warmer.
Last week, Tajik news agency Asia Plus informed about the death of three infants in two maternity facilities in the capital. Because of the outages of electricity (agreed between the city energy company and the municipality), physicians failed to launch medical equipment (artificial ventilation for newly-born).
There has not been such a harsh winter in the contemporary history of Tajikistan. This season is especially tough – in dwelling areas of Dushanbe electricity is available only 2-3 hours a day. During the first weeks of January the temperature in the Tajik capital dropped down to minus 20 Celsius; in mountainous areas – to minus 30. One can only guess what’s going on in rural areas. Before the dissolution of the USSR and the civil war, the country had a decent infrastructure – schools, kindergartens and clinics worked in all weathers. The last seventeen years, winters in Tajikistan are test on survival.
On 15 January, Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon ordered to increase power supply to Dushanbe by 1 million kW-hours. It was decided to take this amount of electricity from the Tajik Aluminum Plant (TADAZ). This is the only strategic object of Tajikistan’s infrastructure that works uninterruptedly. Specialists say that this “redeployment” of electricity would hardly improve the situation in the capital. It is impossible to take more out of TADAZ – otherwise, the enterprise is risking to loose its expensive electrolytic equipment. TADAZ is one of the top ten biggest aluminum plants. It needs daily up to 20 million kW-hours of power.
TADAZ is being fed by the Nurek hydropower plant, the biggest electric station in Central Asia built in the Soviet period (1961-1980). Nurek generates 98 percent of power in Tajikistan. Experts of the energy holding Barki Tojik say that this year, the level of water in the Nurek reservoir is the lowest ever; several turbines are currently switched off.
Tajikistan produces annually more than 17 billion kW-hours of power. TADAZ consumes more than a half of this amount; and the annual deficit of energy in the country is 3,5 billion kW-hours. There have been plenty of publications about the TADAZ top managers allegedly involved in machinations and embezzlement, due to which Tajikistan’s economy has lost enormous funds. Many times TADAZ has been blamed for huge arrears to the energy holding Barki Tojik.
On 20 January the Tajik government launched the first turbine of Sangtuda-1 hydropower plant, 200 from Dushanbe. The new object was called “the first step towards the alleviation of the energy crisis in Tajikistan”. However, according to sober estimates of experts, annual generation of 670 MW of power (by the end of 2008, it is expected to launch all three turbines of the plant) would resolve just a small part of the problem. Dushanbe alone consumes daily 12 million kW-hours of energy. Moreover, 75 percent of shares of the plant under construction belong to Russia’s Unified Energy Systems, and only 25 percent – to Tajikistan. It is not difficult to guess who will have the main profit from the enterprise.
In 2007, Tajikistan broke off relations with Russian Aluminum (RUSAL), which in 2004 promised to allocate up to $1,5 billion in construction of Roghun hydropower plant. Construction of Roghun started in 1976; in the early 1990-s the construction was frozen. Up to quite a recent time, Roghun was expected to become the largest water-energy object with the highest artificial dam in the world (335 meters). Last summer RUSAL and the Tajik government squabbled over the height and technical design of the dam.
Shortly after the departure of the Russian company, the Tajik government declared recommencement of construction works “under its own steam”. Many economists have openly criticized the inadequacy and absurdity of this intention – the project is long-term, and it would take not less that $100 million every year to keep it going. So far, Tajikistan has not found any investors; the annual budget of the country is less than $500 million; and the external debt is close to $1 billion.
Potentially, the launching of Roghun hydropower plant would help Tajikistan to resolve it energy problem, and even to start selling the surplus of power to the neighboring Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. But the project remains on paper, and is being criticized by experts – the highest dam in the world is planned to be built in a seismicall hazardous region.
In 2007, it had become clear that the wide-scale construction of Roghun is impossible without an international or, at least, a regional water consortium. The Tajik President has been reminding his Central Asian neighbors about this at various fora and summits. So far, the idea has found a relative support only from Kyrgyzstan.
The investment climate in Tajikistan is very unattractive. According to the World Bank, the country is in the list of the most unfavorable in terms of business environment. In rural areas people survive mainly due to remittances from their relatives – labor migrants. The number of guest workers is difficult to estimate (according to some sources, there are more than one million of them working abroad; currently, the population of the country is about 7 million). According to the Tajik National Bank, in 2007, arrears in the amount of more that $1,2 billion has gone through domestic banks.
Another official figure – despite economic forecasts made at the beginning of 2007, inflation in Tajikistan has gone beyond 20 percent. Tajikistan is the leader among the CIS countries – not only in terms of inflation, but also in terms of poverty. The main food products are imported; for example, a pack of milk in a Dushanbe food store is 30 percent more expensive than that in a Moscow.
Apart from numerous problems in the spheres of social protection, education and heath (with scarce budget allocations), Tajikistan has another heavy burden – debts of Tajik cotton farmers to local and foreign futures companies. In 2007, the debt has grown to $500 million. On the one hand, the government annually develops new debt restructuring programs receiving loans and grants from international monetary institutions to resolve the problem; on the other hand, like in the Soviet times, the authorities establish annual plans on “strategic monoculture” – the “white gold”, which has totally bankrupted the peasants forcing them to go to Russia for earnings.
The authorities report that the level of poverty in Tajikistan has decreased to 57 percent. It is unclear what formula led to such indicators – the economy is in stagnation; there are very few new enterprises; and it is unclear how industry can work without electricity. At the end of 2007, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan promised to increase delivery of natural gas to Tajikistan; at the same time, the neighbors increased prices – up to $145 per one thousand cubic meters of gas.
At a recent press conference, head of Sughd province administration Kohir Rasoulzoda said that economic loss only from outages of electricity in his administrative area amounted to $6.7 million. It is difficult to estimate the economic loss across the country due to unwise policy of the Tajik authorities. Instead of rehabilitating the infrastructure, somebody prefers to erect five-star hotels (currently, there are five such objects in Dushanbe). On a hills in downtown area of the capital, there is an unfinished aqua park; and on the opposite hill – a new palace of Nation (construction works are terminated because the building is sinking).
In the meantime, social strain is growing; people are getting more cynical; they do not believe their government’s promises. There have been some allegations in the press about forthcoming increase of tariffs on electricity and gas – by 40 percent. This means new price boosts on all food products, all kinds of commodities and services. Even employees of international organizations accredited in the country are surprised – why the prices in the poorest of the former Soviet republics are higher than in developed industrial countries?
Spring is coming. It will get warmer, and one problem will be gone. However, after the first rains, residents of Dushanbe will face new challenges – for instance, brown water from taps, – because water purification facilities do not work properly; because somebody has stolen loans and grants. So it goes every year – new season, new seasonal problems.
Konstantin Parshin
Источник: NANSMIT