December 19, 2003	Friday	Shawwal 24, 1424

ISLAMABAD, Dec 18: Private Power & Infrastructure Board (PPIB) of the Federal Ministry of Water and Power has approved four power projects with cumulative capacity of 770-mw at an estimated cost of $838 million.

Three of these will be thermal and one hydel: 123-mw Jarwar Project, 150-mw Western Electric Power Project, 400-mw Balloki Power Project and 97-mw Kotli Hydro Power Project.

PPIB managing director Zafar Ali Khan speaking at a press conference here on Thursday announced that a committee having representation from all stakeholders including Wapda, KESC, Planning Division, Provinces and AJK has approved evaluation reports on pre-qualification of the sponsors for the projects, all from the private sector.

He maintained that the pre-qualification reports of these sponsors were prepared by PPIB as per international standards and following the provisions of the power policy 2002, letters of interest would be issued to these companies.

“We hope that within three years these projects will start their production to meet the country’s increasing power requirement”, he said.

He said the response after the unveiling of power policy 2002, was not encouraging, however, with the passage of time things have started improving and a number of private sector organizations are approaching the board, the PPIB MD said.

Until now, it has received proposals for power projects with cumulative generation capacity of 3,477-mw with an estimated cost $3.6 billion, he said.

As per the forecast, the country needs an additional 1,000-mw every year and to produce this much power an investment of $1 billion is required. Whereas, with the available resources the government alone cannot take in hand all these projects, hence, private sector investment in the power sector is of critical importance, he argued.

Of the approved four projects, three are thermal and will be run by indigenously produced gas, hence would help save foreign exchange of the country, he said.

Answering a question Mr Zafar said the PPIB was also working on a comprehensive transmission policy so that ever-increasing load on the transmission lines could be effectively managed in the coming years.

As Wapda is the potential buyer of power in the country, hence the PPIB is working hand-in-hand with the authority while negotiating with the sponsors, he replied to another query.

Besides these four projects, PPIB is also in process of evaluating pre-qualification details of five more power projects; 100-200-mw gas based power plant at Lanchi, district Karak, 150-mw Fauji power plant at Korangi, Karachi, 200-mw coal based thermal power plant at Jherruk-Sonda, Sindh, 740-mw Munda multipurpose hydro power project, 100-MW Ferozwala power project.