31 May 2011 15:41

Kazakhstan needs to curtail power imports from Kyrgyzstan - ministry

ASTANA. May 31 (Interfax) - Kazakhstan needs to curtail power imports from Kyrgyzstan, said the first vice-minister of Industry and New Technology Albert Rau.

"We need to limit imports of electricity from Kyrgyzstan within the range outlined during the talks with the Kyrgyz leadership," Rau said at a government meeting on Tuesday.

"The volume of power imports we talked about was 1 billion kilowatts, but to date we have already taken over 700 million kWh and in summer we would need at least 550 million kWh more. We advise KEGOC to keep up with the set volumes," said Rau.

National Electricity Grid Company KEGOC in 2010 imported over 1.5 billion kWh of electricity from Kyrgyzstan.