DUSHANBE: Tajikistan on Friday inaugurates a $3.9 billion hydro-electric power plant, a mega project that will enable the impoverished country to eliminate domestic energy shortages and export electricity to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Built on the Vakhsh River in southern Tajikistan, IT is expected to reach a height of 335 metres (1,099 feet) in a decade, becoming the world’s tallest hydroelectric dam.

From Pakistan Federal energy minister Omar Ayub Khan is attending the ceremony.

The first of six turbines in the Rogun hydroelectric dam goes online on Friday, with the power plant expected to reach a capacity of 3,600 megawatts — the equivalent of three nuclear power plants — when completed.

At present, Rogun still resembles a vast construction site, with rocky earth covering the territory from which the powerful Vakhsh flowing through the Pamir mountains was diverted.

It will double energy production in the country of nearly nine million people, alleviating a long-lasting, debilitating national energy deficit. Surplus energy will be sold to neighbours such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan.

Plans to build a dam in southern Tajikistan date back to the Soviet era, but the project was scaled up following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

In 2017, Tajikistan raised $500 million from an inaugural international bond to help finance the construction.

Authorities hope that once the dam goes online it will generate money to finance further construction.