Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, Nov.12 / Trend, H. Hasanov /
President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhammadov plans to pay an official visit to Pakistan on Nov.14, 2011, the Turkmen government said on Saturday.
This issue was discussed at the government meeting.
According to the report, speaking about the importance of his visit to Pakistan, Berdimuhammadov said that "relations between two friendly countries have great potential for boosting cooperation, expressing confidence that the upcoming high-level meeting will facilitate entry of bilateral cooperation into a new level".
Both countries are interested in implementation of the large-scale project on construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline.
At present, key issue in the TAPI negotiations is preparation of a contract on purchase and sale of the Turkmen gas.
The Asian Development Bank actively promotes this project funding the preparation of its feasibility study.
The basic document to advance TAPI project is an inter-state agreement to start implementation of TAPI, signed at a high level in Ashgabat in December 2010.
The length of TAPI can hit more than 1,700 km, its design capacity - 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year, the cost is estimated at $7-8 billion.