ISLAMABAD: After the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and other multilateral donor agencies giving a cold shoulder to the construction of 4,500 megawatt Diamer-Bhasha Dam, Pakistan has started considering other steps to construct the dam from its own resources.
“The Bhasha Dam is a necessity and, therefore, we cannot wait for the ADB and World Bank to fund it. Several proposals are under consideration for the construction of Diamer-Bhasha Dam,” Secretary Ministry of Water and Power Younus Dagha said while briefing a meeting of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Water and Power here on Thursday.
He said out of its Rs100 billion PC-I, the government was already spending Rs56 billion on land acquisition. The technical work on the dam will be completed next year, he added.
The standing committee met here with MNA Arshad Khan Laghari in the chair and was attended by various other members of the committee and officials from the Alternative Energy Development Board (AEDB), National Transmission Dispatch Company (NTDC) and Multan Electric Power Company (Mepco).
Dagha said that in 2014, the cost of per unit solar electricity was Rs17 and now the government wanted it to be decreased to Rs9 per unit.Minister of State for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali apprised the committee of different power projects of hydel, solar, wind and coal, etc, which were initiated by the present government to overcome the shortfall of electricity. He said that there was no issue in the initiation of power projects and provision of funds by the federal government to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. “The federal government has already deposited the project funds in the provincial government’s account,” he said. The state minister said it was the provincial government thatwas responsible for the delay in the execution of power projects. He said the KP government was not taking adequate steps for the implementation of projects.
Managing Director NTDC Fayyaz Ahmad Chaudhry said 50 new transmission projects had been started during the last three years. He said for the new projects, around 2,000-kilometre-long new transmission line will be laid. He said around
12,000 megawatt electricity will be added to the system by the year 2018. He said the NTDC had not so many contractors to start work on production projects. Due to a lack of capability, he said, electricity generation is not being increased as per the demands of the next three years.
Chief Executive Officer, AEDB, stated that currently work on 35 projects was underway. Similarly, he said, projects of combined generation capacity of 295MW were being executed under the CPEC umbrella projects. He said the first power project under CPEC will start generation next month. He further said that energy projects with combined generation capacity of 864MW will be completed by the end of 2018.
Similarly, he said, the AEDB was waiting for Nepra’s decision on power tariff for 17 solar power projects. Besides, 10,404MW bagasse-based electricity will be added to the national grid and 140MW has already been added. He said 12 bagasse-based power projects had been issued letters of intent (LoI) and 15 sugar mills had submitted their proposals for the generation of 1,512MW electricity.
Mepco informed that Kissan Ittehad had to pay Rs6.1 billion for the electricity bills of 2015 and Rs2.1 billion in 2016. The committee directed the ministry to focus on Fata by initiating different projects of electricity to eliminate the factor of loadshedding.
Source: Published at: October 28, 2016 at 05:00AM