♤ Tajikistan has set up a field hospital in Farkor at the border with Afghanistan to treat Northern Alliance fighters. India, it also has a “quietly functional” small base to aid the Afghan government, and helped service and repair Mi fighter planes.
♤ In 1995, India extended a $5 million credit line to Tajikistan to set up a joint venture with a private Indian company for the production of pharmaceuticals.
♤ Despite these links, bilateral trade is not too high at a little over $58 million of which $53.7 million are export from India.
♤ India and Tajikistan elevated their bilateral relations to the level of a “Strategic Partnership”
during the visit of President Rahmon to India in 2012.
♤ Till date, 993slots for ITEC and 339 ICCR scholarships have been utilized by Tajik candidates to study in India. Tajikistan is one of the largest beneficiaries of the ITEC programme (ITEC training slots were increased from 100 to150 during the visit of President Rahmon to India in September 2012).
1.2.2. India-Turkmenistan
♤ Turkmenistan, one of the Republics of the former USSR, was proclaimed as an independent State on 27 October 1991.
♤ It shares borders with Kazakhstan in the north, Uzbekistan in the north and North-east, Iran in the South and Afghanistan in the Southeast. It has an area of 488,100 square kms and stretches 650 kms from north to south and 1,100 km from east to west. The main river of Turkmenistan is Amu Darya, which enters the country from Afghanistan and flows along the north-eastern borders before it enters Uzbekistan.
o TAPI- Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India (TAPI countries) signed two basic documents on 11 December 2010, making a beginning to the TAPI project.
o The TAPI Gas Sales & Purchase Agreement (GSPA) was signed in May 2012. At the 22nd Steering Committee Meeting of TAPI held in Ashgabat on 06 August, 2015, Turkmenistan offered to lead the Consortium. In 2015 groundbreaking for the Turkmenistan leg was held. Transit fee payable by India to Pakistan and Afghanistan has also been agreed.
o The groundbreaking ceremony for the Afghan section of an ambitious, multi-billion dollar gas pipeline was conducted in the presence of Minister of State for External Affairs M.J. Akbar for the ceremony at gas-rich on 23 February 2018.
o 1,840-km pipeline aims to transport natural gas from Turkmenistan’s Galkynysh gas fields by the beginning of 2020. It is expected to help ease energy deficits in South Asia. The bulk of the 33 billion cubic metres of gas to be pumped annually through the conduit will be purchased by South Asian rivals Pakistan and India.
o For Turkmenistan it provides an avenue for diversification of gas deliveries.
o The pipeline will traverse Afghanistan, raising security concerns, and specifically for India the passage through Pakistan is of key concern.
o The overall funding picture for the mammoth gas pipeline, with an estimated requirement of 15 billion US$ remains unclear, with commercial energy giants such as France’s Total failing to follow up on reported interest in the project.
♤ India provides ITEC training for Turkmen nationals in India. In the year 2016-17, 30 ITEC slots were offered to them. In all, since the inception of the programme for Turkmenistan in 1994, over 380 Turkmen nationals have been trained in various courses.
♤ Agreement for the Lapis Lazuli Corridor was signed in Novemebr 2017. It seeks to foster transit and trade cooperation between Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey by reducing barriers facing transit trade. Providing for a major international trade and transport corridor stretching from Turkey to Afghanistan via Central Asian republics