ISLAMABAD, March 13: Water and Power Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar has claimed that the present government will pass on a “much better electricity situation” to the next government as compared to “what it had inherited from the preceding government”.
“During our five-year tenure, we made important decisions for new projects and made the procedures easy and investor friendly,” Mukhtar said while chairing a meeting of the Board of Private Power and Infrastructure Board (PPIB) here on Wednesday. It was the last meeting of PPIB chaired by Ahmad Mukhtar, and in his concluding remarks, appreciated the efforts of PPIB for its relentless efforts to bring in power from the private sector. He remarked that 2530MW have been added to the national grid in the last five years.
“Serious work has been started for generating power through bagasse and furthermore, power generation through wind and hydro resources has got a boost during our government, thus paving way for more reliance on wind power for future.
The PPIB meeting decided that the 7100MW Bunji hydropower project will be undertaken by WAPDA. Studies on the development of infrastructure including transmission lines, access roads and land acquisition will soon be started. It was decided with consensus of Punjab and AJK governments that PPIB will develop 590MW Mahl hydropower project in the private sector.
In order to facilitate and reduce the processing time for independent power projects (IPPs) in obtaining working capital financing from banks, the board approved the execution of ‘direct agreement’ by PPIB with ‘working capital lenders’.
To encourage cheaper coal based power generation, PPIB approved procedures for development of private power projects under upfront tariff. This will standardise and reduce the approval time once NEPRA announces tariff for coal based projects. PPIB MD informed the meeting that the board has undertaken fifteen hydropower projects of about 6,500MW power generation capacity in different locations of the country, some of which are at advance stages of completion.