Power import plan deferred

ZAHEER ABBASI

ISLAMABAD: A plan to import 1,000 megawatts of electricity from Iran has now been deferred because of funding problems, an official of the National Transmission and Dispatch Company told the Senate's Sub-Committee on Finance on Thursday.

Briefing the Senate body, NTDC's Chief Engineer Masoodul Hassan informed the Senate Sub-Committee on Finance that huge funding was required for laying transmission lines for importing electricity from Iran, which could not be arranged and the project had been relegated to backburner. He said it was Pakistan's responsibility to lay the transmission line.

Masood stated that a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the project had been signed in June this year during the visit of the NTDC managing director visit to Iran, but further progress on the project could not be made.

In reply to a question of a committee member, he said that an MoU and not an agreement had been signed for the import of electricity.

About the Dadu-Khuzdar transmission line, he said that the project was funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) and work had been delayed because of the Iranian company's inability to supply the material following sanctions on Iranian banks. Now, he said on the proposal of Jica, the NTDC was going to open Letters of Credit (LCs) and would pay directly to contractors.

He said that the project is scheduled to be completed by June next year if all obstacles were removed at the earliest.

To another query, he explained that all findings for transmission lines and a grid station for Dadu-Khuzdar was being provided by the Jica, which wanted speedy resolution of payment issues for quick completion of the project.

He said that resolution of the power shortage problem in Quetta might take some time. Masood also briefed the committee about the progress on a 100MW electricity project for Gwadar and expressed the hope that it would materialise soon. He said that a 51-million-euro fund and a contractor for the project had been arranged and appeared optimistic about early completion of the project.