October 28, 2008	Tuesday	Shawwal 28, 1429

ISLAMABAD, Oct 27: Multilateral lenders have agreed to provide funds to help Pakistan generate over 3,000MW to overcome power shortages, Deputy Chairman Planning Commission Salman Faruqui said on Monday.

Mr Faruqui, who returned from the United States on Sunday after holding talks with the World Bank, International Finance Corporation (IFC), Exim Bank, said the lenders had agreed to co-sponsor a roundtable of private sector investors in Pakistan’s energy sector.

“Pakistan needs an investment of $20 billion in the power sector in the next 12 years,” the deputy chairman said while speaking at a day-long workshop on development of Integrated Energy Modelling System (IEMS) for Pakistan, organised by the Planning Commission in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank. It was attended by 80 leading experts from various departments, including donors.

He said the World Bank, IFC and Exim Bank had agreed to support development of coal and hydel resources to enhance the country’s power generation capacity.

Pakistan has one of the largest coal reserves in the world. The World Bank agreed to support Suki Kinari (840MW), Munda (700MW) and Kurram Tangi (84MW) hydel projects, which will also help irrigate thousands of acres of arid land.

The bank also agreed to support augment programmes for water storage capacity on the Indus.

Mr Faruqui said the World Bank would provide help for technical studies for desilting of Tarbela Dam and for the Fourth Extension of Tarbela Power Plant by 960MW. Advisory and investment support would also be provided to enhance the generation capacity of Guddu power station from 1,100MW to 1,600MW, he added.

The PC deputy chairman said President Asif Ali Zardari had asked the ministry of water and power to revamp the power sector by rationalising and streamlining the institutional set-up, reducing dependence on imported fuels for electricity generation and undertaking major initiatives to conserve energy and reduce line losses.

He said Pakistan would soon introduce ‘smart electricity meters (SEM)’ to eliminate complaints of inflated and manipulated billing to consumers as part of the IEMS.

The SEM, the world’s most advanced technology, monitors the energy consumption and provides information not only through a traditional power reading, but also in a user-friendly way by displaying animated graphics of money on the screen of the meter.

Mr Faruqui said that pilot programmes would also be undertaken for replacing gas with solar water-heating systems and solar/renewable energy-based water pumping systems for irrigation pumps.

He said the World Bank would also provide investment support for enhancing technical and operational efficiency in power distribution companies before induction of strategic investments to enable them to provide efficient and competitive services to their consumers.

He said the technical assistance project for development of IEMS for Pakistan would be carried out by a consultant team comprising experts from the international resource groups and local experts from MEConsult. The Planning Commission will be the executing agency.

There are two key objectives of the project. The first objective is to assist the government in developing an integrated energy model to assess impacts of various strategies for meeting energy requirements in the most cost-effective manner.

The model will integrate issues related to national resource utilisation, energy supply, energy demand, technology improvement, energy efficiency and environmental impact across all sectors of the energy economy to assess costs and benefits of policies that will shape the country for the coming decades.

The second objective is to build the institutional capacity within the Planning Commission’s energy wing, with the support of other government ministries, agencies, universities and technical centres to ensure sustainability of the model and planning capability and its integration into the decision-making and policy formulation process.

The member energy of the Planning Commission, Parvez Butt, said that after the completion of this project in about 18 months, the country would have a modern centre with computers, software programmes, data base and trained manpower to which all the country’s energy related organisations would have access and where all inputs would be fed and used to predict future scenarios and suggest actions so that such crisis did not happen again.