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Economy

Barki Tojik books a 2.45 billion somoni profit made of currency gains while owing 8.36 billion to the plants that power it

The 2025 accounts of Tajikistan's power utility, published by the energy ministry and read by Asia-Plus on Thursday, show a net operating profit of 2.45 billion somoni, $265 million, after a loss of 1.6 billion in 2024, and the line that made the difference is 2.93 billion somoni of net income from foreign-currency operations. Beneath it sit 29.3 billion somoni of accumulated losses, 23.26 billion of financial obligations and 8.36 billion owed to the generators, Rogun among them. The auditor kept its warning.

Barki Tojik books a 2.45 billion somoni profit made of currency gains while owing 8.36 billion to the plants that power it

Revenue from energy sales rose from 3.90 to 4.55 billion somoni. Total revenue rose from 3.83 to 4.39 billion. Net cash from operations was 484.9 million somoni, against 489.5 million a year earlier. On those three lines Barki Tojik is the same company it was in 2024: a utility that collects about half a billion somoni a year in cash from a business that books more than four.

The fourth line is the year. In 2025 the group recorded 2.93 billion somoni of net income from operations with foreign currency, against 388.3 million in 2024. Asia-Plus does not say what the operations were. The company's largest lender is the Ministry of Finance, at 11.05 billion somoni of long-term loans; Oriyonbank holds 1.97 billion and the EBRD about 600 million. If the currency line is the revaluation of debt held in dollars, the gain is the somoni's, and it reverses when the somoni does. The sign of that line depends on the somoni, not on the grid. That is the desk's reading; the accounts as Asia-Plus reports them do not break the line down.

The auditor, Baker Tilly, signed the statements and kept its warning: a material uncertainty about the group's ability to continue as a going concern, despite the positive result. Accumulated losses fell from 32.35 to 29.30 billion somoni. Financial obligations stand at 23.26 billion, with 1.28 billion of short-term borrowing on top of the long-term loans.

Then the creditors who make electricity. Payables for power bought stood at 8.36 billion somoni at the end of 2025, about 2.6 billion less than a year earlier. The three largest are Sangtuda-1, run by Russia's Inter RAO, 3.26 billion; Sangob, the Iranian company that runs Sangtuda-2 and whose director met the energy minister in Dushanbe earlier this month, 3.11 billion; and Rogun, 1.10 billion.

The sign of that line depends on the somoni, not on the grid.

Rogun is the plant the state is building on the projects budget a UN expert asked Dushanbe to cost on 31 August, in the item this pack's morning edition carried. Its buyer of record inside the country is the company above. Unit 3 is due in September 2027; on the 2025 numbers it adds a creditor to a utility whose cash from operations covers under 2% of its accumulated losses a year and which already owes the two foreign-run plants on the Vakhsh 6.37 billion somoni between them.

The export line is the other book. Tajikistan sold 5.36 billion kWh abroad in 2025, 2.66 billion of it commercially for 912.8 million somoni, and Uzbekistan takes Rogun's construction-phase output at 3.4 cents a kWh under a 20-year contract, as the desk's water longread recorded on Wednesday. The Uzbek contract is priced in cents; the domestic book is Barki Tojik's, and it is the book the auditor doubts.

After the sector's unbundling the functions once held inside Barki Tojik are split between generation, transmission and distribution; the statements are consolidated for the group. What the reform has not changed is who owes whom. The state lends the utility 11 billion somoni; the utility owes the plants 8 billion; the plants' foreign operators are Russian and Iranian; and the profit that closes the circle for 2025 came from the currency line.