KABUL, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- Officials as well as analysts in insurgency-plagued Afghanistan have described the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline project as a "corridor of development" and welcomed it.
Work for the project, designed to transfer 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Galkynysh natural gas reserve of Turkmenistan annually along an 1,800 km route to Pakistan and India via Afghanistan, was formally inaugurated at a ceremony Friday.
The ceremony was attended by hundreds of guests, including presidents of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, Prime Minister of Pakistan and India's Minister for External Affairs, in Herat, Afghanistan.
Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani in his address to mark the ground-breaking ceremony of the project, said that TAPI increases connectivity among the countries of the region. He also added that South Asia is being connected with Central Asia through Afghanistan.
"TAPI is not only a gas project but it has the same importance as an economic corridor," local media quoted Abdul Qadeer Mutfi, the spokesman for Afghan ministry of Mines and Petroleum, as saying.
According to Mufti, the TAPI project will provide 500 million U.S. dollars annually in transit duties to Afghanistan.
Mufti also said that Afghanistan will get 500 million cubic meters of gas for the first ten years and one billion cubic meters for another 20 years.
Feroz Masjidi, deputy minister of policy and planning for Commerce and Industries, believes that the gas provided by TAPI project to Afghanistan would be used for improvement of industries and factories in the conflict-strife country.
Political analyst Framurz Tamana in talks with local media asserted that TAPI as an economic corridor could enhance regional cooperation.
Another expert Mohibullah Nuri observed that the TAPI project in addition to boosting region cooperation would also strengthen relations among the people of countries located in the region.
The major anti-government fighting force in Afghanistan the Taliban outfit has also welcomed inauguration of TAPI project and assured to support it.
According to Afghan observers, implementation of TAPI project would also provide job opportunities for more than 10,000 people in Afghanistan.
