ISLAMABAD, March 4: The government is seeking sizable funding from multilateral institutions, export credit agencies, capital market and bilateral creditors for five big dams it plans to build in the country, according to sources.

The government would also generate sizable funds through each Public Sector Development Programme over the next many years for the proposed dams, sources said. A senior government official told Dawn that initially $6.5 billion was being sought for starting the construction of Diamir-Bhasha dam.

International donors like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, he said, were expected to considerably contribute, both financially and technically, to the construction of the dams over the next few years, he said. “International financial institutions have shown interest in investing in new dams and other large water reservoirs”, he claimed.

He said that the Diamir-Bhasha dam would be built first, to be followed by the construction of Kalabagh, Munda, Akhori and Kurrum Tangi dams.

Storage capacity of the Diamir Bhasha dam was expected to be reduced from 7.34 million acre feet (MAF) to 6.34 MAF because of likely modification in the design of the dam, the official said. When reminded that the ADB did not want to offer funds for the dams in the absence of consensus among the stakeholders, he said that the dams would be built by taking the ‘international donors and agencies concerned’ into confidence.

The World Bank, sources said, had asked the government to locally generate funds, also by alluring local private sector to take part in the mega projects.

The government, they said, was told by the WB officials that it was a big challenge to adopt a financially feasible approach to maintaining and modernizing existing water infrastructure and building new one.