LAHORE, Aug 1: Pakistan badly needs a quantum leap in electricity generation and this can be made possible only through construction of more than one mega dams, which will also help meet the country’s growing water storage needs.
Wapda Chairman Tariq Hamid said this during a briefing he gave to a delegation comprising participants of 87th National Management Course of National School of Public Policy (NSPP) here on Wednesday. The delegation, led by NSPP Director Lt-Gen Javed Hassan (retired), included faculty members and participating officers, a handout said.
The chairman said population growth and sedimentation of water reservoirs had reduced the per capita availability of water in Pakistan to an alarming level. On the other hand, he said, the power consumption had been surging by about 10 per cent per annum because of high economic growth.
Mr Hamid said only a series of mega projects could improve the situation vis-à-vis availability of water and power generation. He warned if the water storage capacity was not enhanced considerably, Pakistan could become a drought-ridden country.
He said sensing the gravity of the situation, Wapda had undertaken feasibility studies of as many as 10 new hydropower projects including Bunji, Dasu, Kohala etc with a generation capacity of more than 11,000MW. These studies would be complete by 2008-09, providing the government with a number of options to start with for generating low-cost electricity, he added.
He also disclosed that at present, feasibility reports of the projects with generation capacity of about 10,000MW were in hand and construction work could be started as and when the federal government gave a go-ahead signal.
He further said Pakistan had the potential of generating 50,000MW hydropower, however, the existing capacity stood at only 6,463MW.
The chairman told that Rs21.23 billion were spent on up-gradation of the power transmission system between 2004-07 to bring the line losses down by 3.3 per cent from 24.8 per cent to 21.5 per cent.
He said Rs36.68 billion projects for improving the transmission system were in progress and expected to be completed by 2009-10.
Responding to a question, the chairman said Rs176.34 billion were paid to Independent Power Producers (IPPs) for purchase of electricity during 2006-07.
Earlier, he made a detailed deliberation on various development projects being executed by Wapda in water and power sectors. Members of the authority Muhammad Mushtaq Chaudhry (Water), Fazal Ahmad Khan (Power) and Chaudhry Abdul Qadeer (Finance) and other senior officials also attended the briefing.