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World Bank agrees to restart Afghanistan CASA-1000 power project

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The World Bank has announced that it has agreed to restart the Central Asia-South Asia Electricity Transmission and Trade Project (CASA-1000) in Afghanistan amid concerns among the other participating countries -Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan - that they risk $1billion of stranded assets.

However, the WB said the resumption would only take place within a ring-fenced structure that would ensure all construction payments and future revenue are managed outside of Afghanistan and do not involve the Islamic Emirate government.

The structure would also mean a strengthened commitment to the use of international consultants to supervise progress and third-party monitoring to verify progress and certify contractor invoices, it said.

The $1.2bn CASA-1000 regional power project is designed to interconnect the power grids of the four participating countries, allowing for hydro power-generated electricity to be exported from the two Central Asian states to Afghanistan and to Pakistan via Afghanistan.

The project was approved by the World Bank board in March 2014 with financing from the International Development Association (IDA), but in Afghanistan it was paused, with all implementation activities stopped, in the wake of the return to power of the Islamic Emirate.

Before the project was paused, about 18% of the towers for the Afghanistan portion of the CASA transmission line had been erected and about 95% of the materials and equipment needed to complete the project in the country had been supplied, according to the World Bank.

Despite the Afghanistan pause, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan and Pakistan continued with the implementation of CASA-1000 and construction activities are nearly complete in all three countries, it added.

The ring-fenced resumption, said the World Bank, would be in two phases: construction, expected to take three years, and operations after that.

Its statement concluded: “During the project construction phase, the World Bank will make payments directly to the offshore accounts of international contractors and consultants, based on verification of invoices by the independent monitoring agency.

“For the operations phase, Offshore Account Bank (Abu Dhabi) arrangements are in place to ensure that payments and revenue are ring-fenced offshore as per commercial contractual agreements with requirements for no objection for use for specified purposes, including purchase of electricity from Tajikistan and Kyrgyz Republic under the CASA-1000 and other existing power purchase agreements.”

The IEA has repeatedly called for the resumption of stalled development projects in the country by international organizations and countries.

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) says that, any project that is implemented in Afghanistan should be done once the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has been informed.

The IEA also said Afghanistan’s conditions should be taken into consideration.

“We are ready to cooperate. There is security in Afghanistan and there are facilities to implement the project and the system cooperates in the necessary sectors and will not be an obstacle,” said Zabiullah Mujahid, IEA’s spokesman.

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Iran’s non-oil exports to Afghanistan rise by 31% this solar year

Iran’s imports from Afghanistan also rose sharply, totalling over $33 million, a 192% increase in this period

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Iran's non-oil exports to Afghanistan surged by 31% in the first half of this solar year (April to September 2024), totalling over $1.77 billion.

According to Iran’s trade association in Afghanistan, both the value and volume of non-oil exports to Afghanistan saw substantial growth. 

Statistics provided by the association indicate that nearly 560,000 tons of Iranian goods, including iron, steel, cement, eggs, and potatoes, were exported to Afghanistan during this period.

Iran’s imports from Afghanistan also rose sharply, totalling over $33 million, a 192% increase in this period. 

The primary exports to Iran included barley, corn, peanuts, and chilies.

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Private sectors of Afghanistan, Kazakhstan sign contracts worth $100 million

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Private sectors of Afghanistan and Kazakhstan have signed contracts worth $100 million during the visit of an Afghan delegation to Almaty recently, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) announced on Thursday.

The agreements include the export of more than 2,000 tons of dried fruit, the export of fresh fruit, including pomegranates, and the export of cotton, Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Islamic Emirate, said on X.

Mujahid said that the Islamic Emirate delegation during its recent visit to Kazakhstan signed a "road map of cooperation between Afghanistan and Kazakhstan in the fields of trade, industry, mining, energy, logistics, agriculture, telecommunications, health, higher education and humanitarian aid.”

He said Kazakhstan also assured that it would provide more facilities for the transit of Afghan goods to China and other countries through Kazakhstan.

The allocation of an area "as a logistics center for Afghan goods" in the port of Khargos was also part of the agreement between the two sides to facilitate the unloading and loading of Afghan traders' goods.

The spokesman of the Islamic Emirate also said that Kazakhstan will participate in the construction of the Torghundi-Herat, Kandahar-Spin Boldak and Mazar-e-Sharif-Kharlachi railway projects.

Mujahid added that Kazakhstan will also participate in the establishment of a trade and transit center in Herat province, which will be used to store and finance trade and transit goods. Meanwhile, Kazakhstan has agreed to establish permanent expo centers for the sale of Afghan goods in various cities of Kazakhstan.

It is worth mentioning that the delegation of the Islamic Emirate led by Nooruddin Azizi, Acting Minister of Industry and Commerce, participated in the three-day exhibition of Afghanistan's domestic products, which was launched on October 21 in Almaty.

The Ministry of Industry and Commerce recently announced that 23 tons of pomegranates from Kandahar province were exported to Almaty through the port of Torghundi.

 

 

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China resumes direct rail trade with Afghanistan

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China resumed its direct freight rail services to Afghanistan on Thursday when a train loaded with goods left Nantong city in Jiangsu province.

The train, carrying commercial goods in 55 wagons, is heading for the northern Hairatan border in Balkh province, Yue Xiaoyong, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Special Representative for Afghanistan, said in a post on X.

Nantong is a central hub of the Belt and Road Initiative and is located north of Shanghai.

The resumption of the rail line was marked at a formal ceremony on Thursday with Yue and Bilal Karimi, the Afghan Ambassador to China, in attendance.

This comes after China recently announced plans to lift customs tariffs on Afghan exports to China by the end of this year, further strengthening trade ties between the two nations.

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