ISLAMABAD, Dec 20: The government is committed to achieving its targets for inducting more power capacity into the national grid and get rid of the menace of loadshedding by the next year.
The Minister for Water and Power, Raja Parvez Ashraf, told a meeting of the Private Power and Infrastructure Board (PPIB) on Saturday that 2,851 MW will be added to the system next year.
The meeting was attended by Secretary of Water and Power Ismail Qureshi, Secretary of Planning Commission Suhail Safdar, Additional Secretary of Petroleum and Natural Resources G. A. Sabri and Managing Director of PPIB Fayyaz Elahi, besides other senior government officials and private members of the board.
The minister congratulated that the 165 MW Attock General Power Project has already synchronised which will shortly be inaugurated by the president. The power plant is due to start supplying power to the system very soon.
The PPIB managing director briefing the Board said that the rental power projects being processed by PPIB are showing good progress and their contracts have been concluded, while PPIB will solicit additional rental power projects on fast track basis through press, in the coming week. He conveyed to the board that while the projects are being processed on a fast track basis, at the same time an exercise is being carried out to establish realistic power demand and supply scenario for all future projects. For future projects, an optimum fuel mix is being considered, and imported coal projects may also be further encouraged due to the declining cost of coal in the international markets, in addition to the efforts of developing our domestic coal and hydel resources.
Raja Parvez Ashraf lauded the efforts of the PPIB team for attracting the investors’ community for establishing power plants in the country, and processing project proposals on a fire fighting mode. It was decided that in order for PPIB to perform more effectively, it should be given a statutory status and after due inputs of concerned ministries, a summary should be moved for an act of parliament to provide such status to PPIB.