February 4, 2003	Tuesday	Zul Hijjah 2,1423

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ISLAMABAD, Feb 3: Pakistan has asked the World Bank not to suspend its financing to the $2.5-billion Ghazi Barotha Hydropower project as all conditionalities of the loan agreement had been fulfilled, a senior government official told Dawn.

The World Bank had earlier told Pakistan that it would suspend its financing to the project if Islamabad failed to meet three conditions before Jan 31.

Secretary water and power, Riaz Ahmad Khan, told reporters here on Monday the WB was in fact planning to finance a number of water and irrigation projects in Pakistan and negotiations were currently in progress to identify the projects and quantify the total funding over the next few years.

He said that the economic affairs division (EAD) had responded to the WB well before time and explained in detail that Pakistan government had in no way violated any conditionalities agreed upon under the loan agreement.

He said that an environmental protection cell had been established to take care of environmental issues under the Ghazi Barotha project.

The question of criminal investigations into the alleged corruption in acquisition of land had nothing to do with loan agreement.

The World Bank had demanded that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB)’s probe into acquisition of land should be dropped and the remaining displaced people of Tarbela dam be settled in a satisfactory manner, Wapda chairman Zulfiqar Ali Khan had told reporters recently.

Riaz Ahmad Khan hoped that the explanations given by the EAD would satisfy the WB and the funding programme would stay on track.

He said the issue would perhaps not come under discussion during the forthcoming visit of the bank’s vice president to Pakistan later this week.

He said no proposal was under study to discontinue general sales tax collection on electricity through power bills as demanded by Wapda.

He said the government could use its discretion to employ various channels for revenue collection. He was asked whether the federal government was giving any consideration to Wapda chairman’s demand that the government should use the Central Board of Revenue, and not Wapda, for GST collection on power.