May 02, 2007	Wednesday	Rabi-us-Sani 14, 1428

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ISLAMABAD, May 1: The World Bank has offered financing for the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project, big dams and infrastructure development in Pakistan but wants institutional capacity building, adherence to prudent resettlement policies and updating land acquisition laws.

In a discussion with a couple of journalists arranged by the Ministry of Finance, World Bank’s vice-president for South Asia Praful Patel described the proposed $7.4 billion Iran-Pakistan-India project as a “very good project” and said the bank would like to fund it but hastened to add that Pakistan had not yet approached it on the subject.

He said the World Bank would not propose on its own to finance the project but if a request was made, the bank would give it a serious consideration and would be willing to provide funding. He repeatedly said the IPI project was a feasible project offering cheapest price of gas, which could be implemented to cater to the energy needs of Pakistan and India. He said the World Bank also supported the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan gas pipeline. If materialised, he said, the IPI project would doubly benefit Pakistan; it would overcome energy shortages and yield substantial revenue in the form of transit fee annually from India and play a pivotal role in strengthening its economy.

Mr Patel also called for better harmonisation among the provinces to share benefits of shared assets like rivers, dams and roads etc. Similarly, he warned that if pockets of poverty continued to exist, the tendency of extremism would increase and become a destabilising factor for the country.

He lamented that Pakistan, which had world class water infrastructure in 1960, had become one of the most water stressed country now because no attention was paid to improving water management techniques and building on that infrastructure. He also expressed dissatisfaction over the current water distribution system under the Indus River System Authority and said farmers at the tail-end in Sindh remained deprived of their water shares.