ISLAMABAD: The Balo­chistan government and Wapda are at odds over the cost of constructing the Nualang dam and the project is being delayed because of this rift.

A meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Water Resources was informed on Friday that the cost of the dam as per Wapda’s feasibility study was around Rs27.3 billion and it was estimated to irrigate 47,000 acres of land. The dam will have the gross storage capacity of 242,163 acres feet and it will generate 4.4MW of electricity.

The committee was told that the project was delayed because of fund constraints. It was informed that the Asian Development Bank (ADB) was willing to finance the project, but the funding process could not move forward beca­use of non-concurrence of the government of Balochistan.

Wapda officials said the project had been designed on an international competitive bidding (ICB) basis and the ADB had placed funding in its 2020-21 plan.

On the other hand, officials of the Balochistan government told the committee that their government had finalised its PC-I with an estimated cost of Rs23bn with additional land and it wanted to build the dam on its own as Wapda had already delayed the project.

Senior Water Chief of Planning Commission Syed Naseer Gillani informed the committee that after the 18th Amendment it had been decided that all projects benefitting only one province would be built by the province concerned while projects benefiting more than one province would be constructed by the federal government.

The committee stressed the need for reviewing both PC-1s and decided to form a sub-committee to look into the matter.

Published in Dawn, November 10th, 2018