Barqi Tojik’s debt to Open Joint-Stock Company (OJSC) Sangtudinskaya GES-1, which operates the Sangtuda-1 hydroelectric power plant (HPP), reportedly rose 293.5 million somonis in a year to December 31, 2020, reaching 1.6 billion somonis. 

According to OJSC Sangtudinskaya GES-1, the rate of payment for the supplied electricity last year did not exceed 58 percent. 

In 2020, OJSC Sangtudinskaya GES-1 reportedly supplied about 2.2 billion kWh of electricity to Barqi Tojik (Tajikistan’s national power utility company), which was 4.8 percent fewer than in 2019.  

A statement released by Sangtudinskaya GES-1 notes that the installed capacity utilization factor last year amounted to only 37.4 percent, which was 2 percent fewer compared to 2019.   

Recall, the construction of the Sangtuda-1 hydropower plant located some 110 kilometers southeast of Dushanbe began in the late 1980s.  By the early 1990s, only 20% of the construction work had been completed, and further construction was suspended due to a civil war that broke out in Tajikistan in the early 1990s.  The talks between Russia and Tajikistan on completing the construction of the Sangtuda-1 HPP began in 2003 and in 2004 the parties signed an inter-governmental agreement.

Russian-Tajik OJSC Sangtudinskaya GES-1 was established to complete the construction of the Santuda-1 power plant.  Russia’s Inter RAO YeES and the Ministry of Energy and Industries of Tajikistan signed an agreement on the establishment of the company in Dushanbe on February 16, 2005.

Russia owns 75% percent of the shares minus one share and Tajikistan assumes the 25% ownership interest plus one share in Sangtudinskaya GES-1.

The Sangtuda-1 HPP was officially commissioned on July 31, 2009.  The plant now reportedly provides around 15% of Tajikistan’s electricity output.