Chairman of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) Authority Asim Saleem Bajwa shared on Wednesday that 88 per cent of the work on the Karot Hydropower Project has been completed.

The hydropower project — the first of its kind under the CPEC — is expected to be completed in April 2022 and is being built on the River Jhelum, he said.

Sharing the details of the Karot Hydropower Project in a tweet, Bajwa said the investment in it amounted to $1,780 million while 5,000 local people were directly employed for its construction.

The 720-megawatt Karot Hydropower Project was initially due to be completed in 2020. It has the capability to generate 3.249 billion units of clean electricity per year for the national grid.

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The project is being developed on a Build-Own-Operate and Transfer (BOOT) basis at an estimated cost of $1.98bn including a development cost of $1.698bn and interest during construction of $243m by Karot Power Company Private Ltd, comprising of M/s Three Gorges South Asia Investment Ltd (TGSAIL) and Associated Technologies (Pvt) Ltd of Pakistan.

The project is being constructed on a concrete gravity of 91 metres high dam with a crest length of 320 meters near the village of Gohra. The dam's reservoir will be approximately 152m cubic metres in volume, with a length of 27 kilometres. Around 72 homes and 58 businesses were expected to be relocated due to project construction while 2.8-km of the Karot-Kotli road and 8.9-km of the Azad Pattan-Kahuta road were expected to need relocation.

The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) had approved in February 2016 the project's levelised tariff at 7.57 cents per unit for 30 years at an exchange rate of Rs101.6 per dollar. Its groundbreaking ceremony was held in January of that year.