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Weekly Lists
May 4, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 30
bne:
Infrastructure
Turkmenistan opens $1.5bn seaport to boost revenues from shipping traffic
ADB and Tajikistan sign $90mn grant agreement for 40km road rehabilitation
Turkmenistan on May 2 opened a new $1.5bn cargo and passen- ger seaport on the Caspian Sea in order to boost its revenues from handling traffic on North-South shipping routes. The Turkmenbashi port will triple the Central Asian country’s annual cargo handling capacity to 25-26mn tonnes.
The launch of the port is in line with China’s One Belt One Road initiative, which seeks to transform Central Asian territories into
a transit hub with modern infrastructure for Chinese exports to Europe and vice versa. The post-Soviet nation has its own ambitions of becoming a transit zone and it is already linked to China via a Kazakh railway. The seaport would help Ashgabat extend its transit capacity for Chinese goods.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Tajik government have signed a $90mn grant agreement for the rehabilitation of a 40-kilo- metre section of the Dushanbe-to-Kurgonteppa road in Tajikistan, the ADB said on April 30.
The road renovation will help improve connectivity between the Central Asian country’s two major economic hubs and contribute to improving the safety of the nation’s highway network. The Dushan- be-to-Kurgonteppa road carries around 10,000 vehicles per day. The project is part of the ADB’s Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) programme, which seeks to develop trade, economic and energy corridors in 11 countries, including Afghani- stan, Azerbaijan, China, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
Cayman Islands-based SkyPower Global will invest $1.3bn into the construction of photovoltaic solar energy facilities in Uzbekistan with a total capacity of 1,000 MW, state-run UzDaily news agency reported on May 1.
The Uzbek government is targeting the generation of 21% of the country's electricity from renewable energy sources by 2031. Last June, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed a law ratifying the charter of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) - a decree from the same month set goals to allocate $5.3bn to 810 investment projects to develop renewable energy up until 2022. In 2016 when Mirziyoyev came to power, Uzbek authorities announced a plan to finance 30 industrial companies' efforts to switch to renewable energy sources for generating electricity.
SkyPower Global to invest $1.3bn in con- structing Uzbek solar power plants