DUSHANBE, April 19, 2010, Asia-Plus  - Deputy Foreign Minister, Abdullo Yuldoshev, considers that figures for trade between Tajikistan and in China in 2009 provided by the Agency for Statistics do not correspondent to the facts.

“According to the Agency for Statistics, Tajik-Chinese trade in 2009 amounted to 671.9 million U.S. dollars, while the actual figure for the Tajik-Chinese trade in 2009 is higher than 1 billion U.S. dollars,” Yuldoshev told reporters in Dushanbe on April 19.  

He stressed that 80 percent of Chinese products had bend delivered to Tajikistan via the Kulma border-crossing checkpoint on the Tajik-Chinese border in Gorno Badakhshan.

He noted that the Tajik government paid significant attention to rehabilitation of the highway from Dushanbe to Kulma.  “We do not yet have opportunities to ensure the year-round operation of the crossing,” said Yuldoshev, “However, we plan to create conditions for regular traffic along this highway in the future.”  703 kilometers of this highway will be rehabilitated within the next few years that will allow increasing trade between the two countries, he added. 

According to Yuldoshev, Foreign Minister Hamrokhon Zarifi is expected to pay visit to China next week and he will discuss organization of the year-round operation of the Kulma crossing with his Chinese counterpart.

We will recall that sine May 1, 2008, the crossing has worked every day, except weekends, from May though November.

The Tajik-China trade route, opened in 2004, runs from Khorog, the capital of Gorno Badakhshan in southeastern Tajikistan, over a high-altitude plateau and then down into China, where it ends in the city of Kashgar, 700 kilometers away.

As conditions are so tough at the Kulma border crossing, which is located on a mountain pass 4,400 meters high, until May 1 2008, the gateway had stayed open only 15 days out of every month, while from November through April it had been closed altogether.