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Power Shortage: ‘WAPDA faces no problem in financing 20 reservoirs’

LAHORE: The WAPDA is having no problem in obtaining finances for its twenty water reservoir and hydro-electricity worth Rs 984 billion because each of these projects has the ability to generate enough income to create surplus after servicing its loans.

This was stated by the Chairman WAPDA, Shakeel Durrani while addressing the members of Lahore Economic Journalists Association at WAPDA Auditorium on Friday.

Among these 20 projects, Bhasha Dam could be termed as the most ambitious as well as the most commercially viable project. He said the tender for awarding contract for the Karakurum Highway bypass would be opened next week while the physical work on the actual dam would start next year.

He said this $11.3 billion project is the largest ever development project undertaken in Pakistan. The beauty of the project is that it would produce electricity worth $2 billion per year besides adding 10 per cent in the GDP by adding huge land for irrigation and further increasing the generation capacity at Tarbela, Ghazi Brotha and Chashma.

He said five years after its commissioning, the dam would recover all its cost. Regarding the safety of Bhasha Dam chairman WAPDA said that global experts have confirmed that the dam site is 25 kilometers away from the earthquake prone area, generally a site 5 kilometer away is considered as safe.

He stated that hydro-electric-cum-irrigation dams recover their cost very rapidly. Presently, Tarbela dam is paying back the same amount every year that was spent on its construction. Mangla he said is paying back every year three times its total cost.

He said after separation of PEPCO, WAPDA is concentrating on water projects only. Technical staff is the main asset of WAPDA that apart form preparing projects also oversees their implementation. He said functioning f all water projects even after 40 years of completion is a tribute to the competence of WAPDA staff.

Senior WAPDA engineer Dr Izhar in his presentation pointed out that the water availability in Pakistan has reduced from 5260 cubic meter per capita in 1950 to 1038 cubic meter now. He said any country with per capita water availability of below 1000 is globally considered as water starved country. Pakistan he added is fast moving in this direction. After accounting for all safeguards to the environment, Pakistan is still left with 18 million feet of water that goes down in the sea. staff report

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