The president's message to the participants, published by the state news agency on the morning of 1 October, sets the forum's purpose as a direct dialogue between foreign investors, international financial institutions and the Turkmen state and private sector, with guests invited to study the country's macroeconomic indicators, its reforms and its investment strategy. The one project it names is TAPI: construction of the Serhetabat-Herat section of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, which Ashgabat calls Arkadagyň ak ýoly, the Arkadag's white road, is under way, and the power transmission and fibre-optic lines on the same route are advancing at the same pace, the message says. It gives no figure, no date and no investor's name.
The programme does name people. News Central Asia, which has followed the preparations, lists Armenia's economy minister Gevorg Papoyan, Iran's deputy economy minister Mahdi Heidari, Hamad Mohammed Al-Nasr of Qatar's ministry of commerce and industry, Prince Mansour bin Mohammed Al Saud of Saudi Arabia's Najd Gate Holding and Yeom Kihun of South Korea's ONU H&C among the speakers, alongside the World Bank, the IFC, the ADB, the EBRD and the World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies.
The one project it names is TAPI: construction of the Serhetabat-Herat section of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, which Ashgabat calls Arkadagyň ak ýoly, the Arkadag's white road, is under way, and the power transmission and fibre-optic lines on the same route are advancing at the same pace, the message says.
The programme runs through energy and petrochemicals, the green transition, transport corridors and the Caspian, the digital economy and artificial intelligence, agribusiness, tourism, urban infrastructure and water. Gas appears once, as the pipeline under construction. The rest of the programme is sectors in which Turkmenistan has so far attracted little foreign capital.
The forum opens a run of hosting that lasts into late October. Caspian littoral ministers meet in Avaza on 7 October, the Central Asia and Azerbaijan consultative meeting follows on 8 October and the CIS Council of Heads of State on 9 October, with Vladimir Putin expected. OGT-2026, the oil and gas conference, runs from 21 to 23 October.
The address leaves out the context of Turkmenistan's pitch. Turkmen gas goes almost entirely to China, the state portal announced a fourth phase of the Galkynysh field with Chinese partners on 25 September, and TAPI is the one southbound project that has reached construction. The investment forum is the commercial opening act, and the test of its two days is whether the memoranda it produces name figures.