Selling of Hydro Electro Stations – Threat or Part of New Policy?!

Sopo Getsadze

In accordance to the agreement signed on April 1, 2011 hydro-electro stations KhramHES 1 and KhramHES 2 were assigned to the Russian Company under ownership. According to the memorandum, Georgian side will receive 104 million USD before November 2011. Russian Company Inter Rao will be owner of the hydro-electro stations before 2025.

According to the earlier agreement (2000), Russian Company had right to be only the manager of the stations before 2025.

Experts have already responded to the assignation of the Georgian hydro-electro stations to the Russian Company. Georgian experts have controversial opinions about the issue.

Power Expert from the Republic Party Gia Khukhashvili told the Human Rights Center that the agreement creates some threats for Georgian side. “We get depended on the country which we have declared to be our enemy. Energetics is neither pure economics nor pure business; it is part of policy too. We are getting more and more integrated into Russian space. With similar agreement Georgian authority gave bigger social tool to our enemy who will get use of this tool at any moment. Everybody knows that businessmen do not run the InterRao; it is run from the Kremlin and there are no guarantees when and how the Russian Government will use this tool against us.”

As for the ownership of the hydro-electro stations, the expert clarified that ownership does not have much importance in the energetics. Here the more important issue is who controls and runs the station: “The manager of the hydro-electro station has similar authority as the president in the Georgian state who can occupy the position only for four years. However, he can do much good and bad within those four years.”

Expert Soso Tsiskarishvili has different opinion about it. He said assignment of Georgian hydro-electro stations to Russian company is not a bad fact at all. However, he added that in parallel of it, the government should not ban Georgian sportsmen and singers to cooperate with the country with which they have signed non-transparent agreement. “Our country is not capable to independently export the produced Georgian energy abroad and tries to balance this shortcoming by cooperating with the Russian Companies who are dictators of the world energetics. If it is a new policy, it has perspective but unfortunately it is continuation of the policy which started in 2004 – when entities are assigned to the Russian companies based on the decisions of concrete people without any preliminary consideration.”

Except ownership agreement, the agreement on the construction of three new hydro-electro stations on the Khrami River was signed with the Company InterRao. According to this document, Russian Company has to put the hydro-electro stations of 90-100 megawatts into motion before 2015.

Experts are pessimistic about this part of agreement. Khukhashvili thinks, “This investment is absurd. I have seen many similar promises but I have seen the real investment neither from Russians nor from other investors.”

Soso Tsiskarishvili shares his opinion about it: “Non-transparent deals are usually made by our government. So, let us wait for the real result – who, when and how much will invest in our country?”

He said, in most cases, the promised amount of investment are either cut in half or extremely reduced.