April 06, 2007	Friday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 17, 1428

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ISLAMABAD, April 5: The United States has offered Pakistan financial and technical assistance to overcome its power shortage but wants Islamabad to review public sector power subsidies.

“Next three years are going to be very difficult and challenging for Pakistan to resolve its energy crisis for which we are ready to offer our financial and technical support,” US energy expert Gordon W. Weynand said here on Thursday.

While the United States was willing to help, he said, subsidies like the one in Balochistan caused distortions in tariff structure.

He said he had held useful talks with officials of the ministries of petroleum, water and power, Planning Commission, Wapda, KESC and the private sector.

“Our mission is to put together economic growth strategy for Pakistan for the next five years and to see how energy fits into the Pakistani economy,” he said.

Mr Weynand is Energy Team Leader in the Office of Infrastructure and Engineering in the Bureau for Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington. Currently, he is on a two-week visit to Pakistan.

He also called for improving the energy infrastructure, enabling the country to benefit from vast energy resources.

He added that it was unreliable and inadequate.

Asked to comment on the decision to pursue Iran, Pakistan and India gas pipeline project during the Saarc meeting on Wednesday, Mr Weynand only said that Washington opposed the project.

He said that the United States had decided to help Pakistan import electricity from Central Asia, especially Tajikistan.

The US energy expert said that the World Bank planned to provide financial assistance while the Asian Development Bank (ADB) would be extending technical support to help import 1,000 megawatts of electricity from Tajikistan.

Commenting on the security concerns about the Afghan transit route for the energy project, he said: “These are some difficult issues but then we will make sure that every thing goes normal in Afghanistan and Pakistan gets this electricity from Tajikistan and also from Kyrgyzstan.”

The United States energy expert said Pakistan was offering an attractive investment policy, particularly to oil and gas companies.

He said: “This is lack of knowledge about Pakistan due to which US companies did not come here for investment in a big way.”

He said that he found Pakistan to be a peaceful country where there were no serious security problems for making foreign investment.

He said there existed fair chances for initiating private sector joint venture in various fields for which Washington would provide risk-mitigating guarantees.

Mr Weynand said that the South Asia Regional Initiative for Energy (SARI/Energy) is an eight-country programme, promoting energy security in this region.

These countries include Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.