BAKU, Azerbaijan, January 12
By Amina Nazarli - Trend:
Turkmenistan will provide Afghanistan with a loan to cover its contribution to the TAPI project's initial construction work on Afghan section, delayed for years upon various reasons.
Waliullah Shahin, chairman of the Center for Strategic Studies of the Afghan Foreign Affairs Ministry said, Trend reports citing Orient.
"We have agreed with Turkmenistan that it will provide Afghanistan with a loan to cover expenses, and Afghanistan will repay it in the future with project proceeds," he said.
Financing is the major impediment to TAPI’s goal of transporting 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year from Turkmenistan to India via Afghanistan and Pakistan. The $10-billion project has been cash-strapped since its inception and the financing issues worsened even more since Afghanistan's government fell.
In India, the end point of TAPI, the entire infrastructure has already been built in order to receive the gas pipeline. But Afghanistan and Pakistan have been unable to complete the construction of their sections for several years.
Afghanistan, short on funds and facing development challenges, is having a difficult time making progress in its section.
The process appears to begun on February 23, 2018, but no work on laying pipes across Afghanistan was implemented. Back in September 2020, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan signed a memorandum to select land plots for the TAPI highway, but the process was halted at that point. Then the pipe-laying was scheduled to begin in 2021, but the situation with the pandemic and the collapse of the Afghan government stymied the process.
Shahin also stated that 7 agreements with project partners on the TAPI gas pipeline will be signed in the near future.
It was planned to sign 16 agreements for the TAPI project's implementation, 9 of which were signed prior to the collapse of the previous government.
Earlier, Afghanistan's Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Hanafi reaffirmed Afghanistan's commitment to cooperation with Turkmenistan and the expansion of bilateral relations.
With the length of the gas pipeline of 1.814 km, TAPI is aimed to connect the massive Galkynysh gas field in southern Turkmenistan to Fazilka in western India. The project is planned to pass through the Afghan cities of Herat and Kandahar, Pakistani Quetta, and Multan before reaching Fazilka in western India.
