ISLAMABAD, March 18: Pakistan on Thursday sought over $56 billion assistance from multilateral and bilateral donors during the next 5-15 years for infrastructure development, notably in the water and power sectors.
Presentations on their development needs were made by the water and power ministry, Wapda, provincial governments, ministries of railways and communications and telecommunication during the Pakistan Development Forum meeting.
A World Bank representative pointed out that the power sector should be a growth driver but its operation losses were consuming around 1.4pc of GDP. Besides, he mentioned poor service, high corruption, high tariff and low reliability which hurt industrial competitiveness and emerged as an investment shattering factor.
Most donors criticized slow progress of the power sector reforms and some thought the sector had the capacity to choke all growth and development initiatives.
World Bank Vice-President for South Asia Praful C. Patel said it appeared as if Pakistan was on the verge of facing a water and power crisis. Yet, he added, there seemed to be no action plan or time-line target presented by the government to meet the crisis situation.
He said the World Bank wanted to have separate briefings on the two sectors to more closely look into the situation and extend its assistance. Earlier, Water and Power Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao made a request for $16 billion to develop around 9,000-mw of power generation capacity in the hydel sector over a period of five to 10 years.
He said another, short-term (2004-08) investment of about $5 billion was required for transmission, distribution and rural electrification activities in Wapda and KESC systems.
Mr Sherpao said the country would start facing power shortage by 2006 and added that by 2010 an additional 5,529mw of power would be needed. He proposed five prospective mega water projects worth $20.4 billion to develop an additional storage capacity of 35.66 million acre feet.
They are: $5.9 billion Bhasha dam, $5.4 billion Kalabagh dam, $6.5 billion Skardu dam, $1.6 billion Akhori dam and $1 billion Munda dam. He said $3 billion was required in the near future to build new canals, $3.8 billion for improving the irrigation system and $2 billion for drainage.
Wapda chairman Tariq Hameed said the department required Rs116 billion to reduce its system losses by 6 per cent. He said that per capita availability of water, which was 5,600 meters in 1951, had dropped to 1,350 meters and was expected to drop further to 1,000 meters by 2012, which would make Pakistan an acute water short country.
Communications Secretary Iftikhar Rashid said Pakistan required more than $9.9 billion for the development of important highways in the next 18 years. He said Rs3 billion was needed per year to keep the network in the present condition and Rs35 billion would be required over the next five years to improve the network.
Pakistan Railways Secretary Khursheed Khan said the country could become a transit hub for outside world, if Rs72 billion could come in investment. He said transport sector's inefficiency alone was costing Rs320 billion to the economy.
