Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has said that government is focused on economic growth and is making huge investments in energy, infrastructure and social protection.
He was speaking at the signing ceremony of agreements worth US$ 720 million with the World Bank and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to support projects in hydropower, governance and policy sectors held on Wednesday in his office.
He said that the results of measures taken by the government are already visible, due to these efforts, the government has succeeded in overcoming the energy shortage to a large extent resultantly the load shedding duration has been curtailed for the domestic consumers while uninterrupted supply is being provided to the industries.
Dar said that keeping in view the future demands on account of greater economic activity; the government is enhancing the production capacity of electricity to cater to the future needs as well.
The objectives of these projects are to facilitate a sustainable expansion of Pakistan’s electricity generation capacity by an installation of three additional power generating units having installed capacity of 470 MW each (total 1410MW) on existing Tunnel-5 without affecting the capacity for irrigation release. The total installed capacity of Tarbela Dam after completion of 5th Extension will rise to 6298 MW.
The total cost of the project is US$ 823.5 million. The World Bank (WB) will finance US$ 390.0 million and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will contribute US$ 300.0 million and the remaining US$ 133.5 million will be funded by funded by WAPDA (US$ 124.5 million) and National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) (US$ 9.0 million) for additional Transmission line from Tarbela to evacuate additional power.
