Kabul Afghanistan January 9 ANI Political turmoil Afghanistan has compounded the completion of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India Pipeline, which is known as Trans-Afghanistan pipeline incompletion for three decades.
The major gas pipeline project TAPI for Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India has yet to be completed despite being in progress for the past three decades. During this time, Afghanistan has seen the collapse and establishment of various governments, according to Tolo News.
Deputy Prime Minister Adbul Salam Hanafi met with Turkmenistan's Deputy Foreign Minister Wafa Khadzhiev on Saturday and discussed bilateral cooperation including restarting the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-India project in Afghanistan.
In 2010, the leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and India discussed TAPI earlier in the day.
The latest meeting of the TAPI was held in 2018 in which several other projects including electric power facilities, a railway and fiber optics were inaugurated, according to Tolo News.
The TAPI was expected to be inaugurated in 2020, but the construction of the project has remained unfinished despite the promises of funding from the Asian Development Bank, according to Tolo News.
The TAPI project, which has an estimated price tag of USD 10 billion in 2018, aims to bring 33 billion cubic meters of Turkmen gas to South Asia for 30 years via a 1,800 kilometer pipeline that will stretch across Afghanistan.
The construction of the project has remained unfinished, TAPI was expected to be inaugurated in 2020.