March 15, 2006	Wednesday	Safar 14, 1427

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

ISLAMABAD, March 14: The government has finalised a plan to set up 45 thermal, hydel and coal-run power stations over the next six years to generate about 11,900 MW electricity.

“These projects will attract $11.2 billion investment, the highest so far. In 1994, the independent power producers (IPPs) had made $4 billion investment,” a senior government official told Dawn on Tuesday.

He said letters of intent had been issued to some companies for initially generating 1,550 mw of electricity and three projects were expected to be set up soon.

“The plan includes 550 mw power projects to be built by the private sector,” he said, adding that feasibility for other 1,000 mw projects was under study.

The official said that a UAE-based power company was investing $460 million to set up four power projects of 600 mw accumulated capacity. “This is a major development and such projects would help attract new foreign investment in our part of the world,” he said.

Responding to a question, he said that 3,600 mw hydel projects, including the $1 billion Monda dam, were at various stages.

Managing director of the Private Power and Infrastructure Board (PPIB), Khalid Irfan Rehman, told Dawn that a number of foreign investors had expressed interest in setting up power projects based on Pakistan’s indigenous resources, including water, wind, natural gas and coal. Their proposals, he said, had been evaluated and prospective investors were being facilitated to come up with projects focussing on maximum utilization of available local resources. Mr Rahman said that till now the PPIB had helped construction of private power projects with accumulated capacity of 17,000 mw, one-third of which were operational.

In reply to a question, he said that the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority was working on a framework to determine new upfront tariff for power companies. “This new tariff will be there in a couple of weeks,” he added.

He said that in 1994 there was a unified tariff which was expected to be adopted in the new framework. “There can be a pre-determined tariff which will also be negotiable because we want to be very flexible,” he said, adding that the new upfront tariff might not be for ever, but for some years.

“And there will be no revision and no change in the new upfront tariff,” he said, adding that the new framework would be highly transparent and would aim to attract substantial long-term investment in the power sector. There were a lot of new initiatives and the government was encouraging local and foreign investment in the power sector.