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Turkmenistan Launches $2.3 Billion Highway in Bid for Asia-Europe Transit

Isolated Turkmenistan on Friday launched construction of a new $2.3 billion national highway, state television reported Friday, as it looks to international cargo flows to ease dependence on gas exports.

The 600-kilometer-long highway will extend east from the ex-Soviet republic's capital Ashgabat to Turkmenabat near the border with Uzbekistan and then south to the rail hub of Tedjen close to the country's border with Afghanistan.

State investments in transit-related infrastructure -- including a $2.2 billion airport in Ashgabat completed in 2016 -- are part of a bid to diversify an economy strongly dependent on hydrocarbon revenues. 

Unusually Turkmenistan's strongman president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov did not attend the televised groundbreaking ceremony outside Ashgabat for the highway, which is due to be completed in 2023.

Presiding over the ceremony instead was his son Serdar Berdymukhamedov, 37, who analysts say is being lined up as his successor and was recently appointed deputy governor of his father's home region.

Serdar Berdymukhamedov called the highway an example of Turkmenistan's "great support to the private sector, which is developing rapidly in our country." 

The road will be constructed by a little-known private company called Turkmen Awtoban, with a loan provided by the national bank. 

Turkmenistan later plans to build a highway connecting Ashgabat to the country's new $1.5 billion Turkmenbashi seaport on the Caspian coast. 

It positions the seaport as a new node in China's trillion-dollar Belt and Road trade and infrastructure vision. 

Turkmen state television said the road construction aims to build up cargo transit along key trade corridors leading to Europe and the Middle East.

Turkmenistan's manat currency lost a fifth of its value after the collapse of hydrocarbon prices in 2014 while Russian energy giant Gazprom's decision to cease purchasing Turkmen gas at the start of 2016 caused further pain.

The move left Turkmenistan even more reliant on demand from China which last year imported 35 billion cubic meters of Turkmen gas via the Central Asia-China pipeline.

Source: Agence France Presse


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