Tarbela’s runaway cost

EDITORIAL: With the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) approving the Tarbela fifth extension project at a staggering Rs316 billion on August 22, the undertaking’s extraordinary cost escalation demands a hard look at how it was planned, managed and executed.

Originally sanctioned in 2016 at Rs82.3 billion, its cost has soared by an eye-watering 282 percent, adding more than Rs234 billion to the bill. For a country struggling with debt, fiscal constraints and mounting demands on scarce public resources, this is a serious indictment of institutional competence, financial discipline and accountability.

The massive cost escalation though is only one part of the story. The circumstances that brought the project to this point are equally troubling, as evident from Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal’s unusually pointed criticism of Wapda and the personnel responsible for its execution.

At a meeting of the Central Development Working Party (CDWP) back in May, he had questioned the project’s management, transparency and oversight, while highlighting findings of a Ministry of Water Resources report into a breach that had occurred in the project’s downstream cofferdam.

The findings of that report were damning, to say the least. It had attributed the breach not to flooding, as might have been expected, but to a design change from roller-compacted concrete to a rock-fill dam, inadequate supervision, and delayed administrative action. The result was a costly chain of events marred by structural failure, prolonged delays and mounting financial losses.

Questions were also raised over the appointment of a local consultant for the project whose credentials were considered dubious, after an international consultant had been replaced through what the planning minister had described as a non-transparent process.

More astonishingly, consultancy costs have soared by 550 percent, from Rs1.8 billion to over Rs19 billion. These numbers raise an obvious question: how did a project approved for Rs82 billion reach a point a decade later where expenditure had already exceeded Rs140 billion, while the revised estimate has now climbed to Rs316 billion? And, more importantly, who is accountable for the decisions that produced this outcome?

The finance ministry has also sought justification for the escalation, particularly as the project is financed by international financial institutions, and asked Wapda to explain how the resulting loans will be repaid.

It is also important to note that the planning minister had ordered an inquiry committee to examine the project’s mismanagement and the performance of its contractors and consultants, with its findings to be placed before Ecnec. Yet Ecnec approved the project despite no apparent evidence that the findings were submitted to it.

Tarbela’s importance to national water security may have necessitated the approval, but that cannot give Wapda or other stakeholders responsible for its execution a free pass. If concerns about design, procurement, consultancy, oversight and financial management can be identified before approval, yet the project still proceeds without those concerns being satisfactorily resolved, what purpose does scrutiny serve?

Tarbela is too important to Pakistan’s water and energy security to become another monument to institutional failure. Every rupee lost to avoidable delays and poor decisions is a rupee unavailable for other urgent national priorities. Nor is this an isolated episode.

Massive cost overruns and execution failures have become a recurring feature of Pakistan’s public sector development landscape. Ecnec’s approval must therefore not be the end of the matter.

There must be a rigorous, independent determination of responsibility. Those whose decisions, negligence or failures of oversight contributed to the escalation must be identified and held accountable.

In a country where public finances are under extraordinary strain, a 282 percent cost increase cannot simply be absorbed by the exchequer and forgotten. At some point, incompetence must have a cost for those responsible for it.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026