Monitoring Desk: Over the past few days, meetings of representatives of Afghanistan and Uzbekistan on the development of bilateral economic cooperation were held in Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, reports Afghan media outlets.
In the evening on Sunday, the President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, received the Uzbek special envoy for Afghanistan Esmatulla Ergasif, with whom he discussed the prospects for cooperation in the energy sector.
During the meeting, the Uzbek diplomat announced to the Afghan side about the future reduction of prices for electricity supplies – from July this year, the cost is planned to be reduced to 3.5 afghans per kilowatt.
The corresponding agreement has already been signed by the Uzbek side with the main energy company of the IRA, “Da Afghanistan Breshnah Shirkat”. Over the past months, this is not the first drop in electricity prices – they initially amounted to 35 afghans per kilowatt, but with the expansion of supplies to the territory of another 7 provinces were reduced to 6.75.
As in the previous case, another decrease in the cost of supplies is due to an increase in their volume – in particular, during the year Uzbekistan is going to increase the supply of electricity to the province of Baghlan.
Several more bilateral meetings were held by the Afghan Minister of Transport Mohammad Hamid Tahmas, who arrived in Uzbekistan on Monday. The head of the transport department held talks with representatives of various companies, discussed with them issues of expanding transport links, as well as prospects for implementing bilateral agreements concluded by the two countries during the recent visit of Ashraf Ghani to Tashkent.
Particular attention was paid to trade development, according to the Uzbek Foreign Ministry, soon the trade turnover between the countries will reach one billion dollars, and each of the parties showed interest in further expansion and strengthening of trade relations.
