Source: Daily Times

By Zafar Bhutta

ISLAMABAD: The banks consortium led by World Bank will provide financing to Pakistan amounting $600 million to import electricity from Tajikistan for overcoming the gap between power demand and supply, a senior official told Daily Times.

Sources said that Pakistan has made inter governmental council that would be led by the federal minister for water and power and secretary and additional secretary will be the member of the council.

Sources said the council would coordinate with other countries to remove the bottlenecks in the way of carrying out the project of import of power from Tajikistan. The total power generation of Pakistan stands at around 10,000MW plus against the demand of 11,500 MW per day. Official said that the import of power would help to meet the rising demand of the electricity especially for the industrial sectors that are the driving engine of the economy. Tajikistan and Pakistan have already singed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for sale of electric power to Pakistan and mutually beneficial cooperation in the field of hydropower development in particular high voltage transmission lines.

Sources said that under the project 1,300 MW electricity would be imported from Tajikistan that would be shared between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Afghanistan will take the share of 300 MW electricity whereas Pakistan would import 1,000 MW electricity to meet the domestic needs of the country.

Sources said that Afghanistan and Tajikistan have also made inter government councils to carry out the project and the head of the councils had been made in Kabul. Pakistan is making efforts to get the appointment of Pakistani official for the executive post in the head office of the councils at Kabul, official added.

According to The World Bank estimates, Pakistan’s peak demand now exceeds 14,000 MW and the present installed capacity of 19,500 MW has become inadequate on account of the wide variations in the water availability that greatly reduces the capacity available. Electricity demand at the generation level is forecast to grow at 7 to 8 percent per year to about 20,000 MW by fiscal year 2010 and 44,700 MW by 2020.

Sources said that The National Engineering Services Pakistan (NESPAK) is working on the feasibility report of the project and the work on the project is expected to start during the next year. Official further said that the import of power from Tajikistan would start in the year 2011 and will help to cope with the issues of load shedding in the country.

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Tags: electricity, Import, MOU, Power crisis, Tajikistan, world bank