DUSHANBE, January 23, 2014, Asia-Plus -- Tajikistan is seeking investments from the Russian Federation in its hydropower sector.

Chairman of Tajikistan’s State Committee on Investments and State-owned Property Management (GosKomInvest) Qodir Qosim stated this here yesterday at the conference entitled “Russia-Tajikistan: Business Dialogue.”

The event brought together more than 30 representatives of the Russian business community and more than 40 Tajik entrepreneurs to discuss the investment attraction issues and ways to strengthen business partnership between the two countries.

 “The Government of Tajikistan has worked out a number of interesting investment projects and we hope to implement this projects due to foreign investments,” Qosim said, noting that Tajikistan’s water and power resources allow generating 530 billion kWh of electricity a year.

He stressed that construction of hydropower plants was of significant importance for development of Tajikistan’s economy.

GosKomInvest head noted that Russia has invested 310.5 million U.S. dollars in Tajikistan’s economy over the last four years.  This amount reportedly includes direct investments of 216 million U.S. dollars.

According to Qosim, more than 110 Tajik-Russian joint ventures now operate in Tajikistan.

In 2013, a two-way trade between Tajikistan and Russia valued at 1.029 billion U.S. dollars, which was 96.4 percent of the 2012 level.  This consisted of Tajikistan’s exports to Russia estimated at 123.095 million U.S. dollars and Tajikistan’s imports from the Russian Federation worth 906.2 million U.S. dollars.

Russia is one of the main trading partners of Tajikistan.  Last year, the Russian Federation accounted for 10.6 percent of Tajikistan’s exports and 22 percent of Tajikistan’s imports.