MOSCOW, March 28 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's electricity monopoly, Unified Energy System, plans to take part in the privatization of generating assets in Uzbekistan, a senior company official said Tuesday.
Leonid Drachevsky, a deputy chairman of the UES management board, said, "We have a substantial interest in cooperating with Uzbekistan, and since the country's generating capacity is now being privatized, we are interested in the Syrdarya State District Power Plant, and other stations."
The Syrdarya station is the country's biggest hydro-electric power plant, at 3,000 megawatts, generating one third of the country's electrical power. It is being privatized under a government program, adopted in 2001, alongside three other major thermal power plants, one of which is near the capital, Tashkent.
UES is also interested working on the transit of electricity through the former Soviet republic, which is one of considerable regional significance.
"Uzbekistan is in this sense [power transit] a key country in Central Asia, as power flows pass from the west to the east, and from the south to the north of the country," he said.
