DUSHANBE, October 9, 2010, Asia-Plus -- The 220 kV Tajikistan-Afghanistan power transmission line is expected to be finished until the end of October, the project implementation unit director Mirtolib Rizoyev said.

According to him, some 96.6 percent of the line on Tajik territory has been constructed.  “As far as the construction of the line on Afghan territory is concerned, according to the data provided by India’s KEC International Ltd, which is constructing the line on Afghan territory, they have carried out 60 percent of work on the first section (from Tajik border to Kunduz) and work on the second section (Kunduz-Puli Khumri) is under way,” Rizoyev noted.

We will recall that the Tajikistan-Afghanistan 220 kV interconnection project was supposed to be fully completed in November this year.

A total cost of the project is 56.5 million U.S. dollars and it is financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund, and the governments of Tajikistan and Afghanistan.

On the territory of Tajikistan, the line starts in the Sanguda-1 hydroelectric plant and ends on the Tajik-Afghan border.  The 220 kV Tajikistan-Afghanistan power transition line is 278 kilometers long, and 116 kilometers of it lies on Tajik territory and 162 kilometers on Afghan territory.