11-12-03 An official signing ceremony of a memorandum on mutual understanding
between the Kyrgyz government's State Agency for Electric Power and the council
for municipal enterprises and transport of the US state of Washington took place
in the Kyrgyz embassy in the USA and Canada on 8 December 2003.
The head of the State Agency for Electric Power, Ularbek Mateyev, on behalf of
the Kyrgyz side, and on behalf of the US side, the chairman of the council for
municipal enterprises and transport of the state of Washington, Richard Hamstead,
signed the memorandum.
The Kyrgyz embassy in the USA and Canada says that the cooperation programme
in the organization of the energy sector is meant to last two years and
envisages an exchange of experience and consultations, and the holding of
bilateral seminars on the issues of regulating energy consumption in the sphere
of municipal services and transport.
Kyrgyzstan is the first Central Asian country with which the state of Washington
is implementing a joint partnership programme in the field of electric power.
The cooperation programme, which is being carried out by the national
assembly of members of the commission for regulating municipal enterprises and
is financed by USAID, is a mechanism for the exchange of experience and
information, and also allows Kyrgyz electric power specialists to have broad
access to regulatory practices in the USA in the field of electric power and
municipal services. For their part, the US specialists can familiarize
themselves with new methodologies and regulatory techniques used in Central
Asia, the Kyrgyz embassy in the USA and Canada says.
The Kyrgyz ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary [to the USA and Canada],
Bakytbek Abdrisayev; and representatives of the US State Department and Britain
and others also attended the ceremony.
Source: BBC Monitoring Central Asia