Kyrgyzstan and US state of Washington to cooperate in energy sector

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.