ADB offers funding in water and power projects
By Asad Cheema

ISLAMABAD—The Asian Development Bank has offered investment in millions of dollars in Water and Power sectors in Pakistan in coming years. They assured technical and financial support and assistance for major water and power sector projects including the upgradation of existing distribution systems and transmission lines in order to improve system efficiency and supply of electricity to the consumers besides major rehabilitation and infrastructure projects in water sector.
The assurance was given by the head of four members delegation of Asian Development Bank, Mr. Sean O' Sullivan during a meeting with the Federal Minister for Water and Power, Raja Pervez Ashraf here on Thursday. The Investment opportunities as well as the progress of on-going projects in water and power sectors were discussed in the meeting.
The Minister while welcoming the delegation informed that the present democratic government was keenly interested to attract the foreign investment in the power sector as according to him there was a great scope in this sector. The Minister further informed that presently Pakistan was facing a shortfall of more than 3000 MW electricity and we are encouraging for inviting private investor to come forward to make investment in power sector.
He stated that the confidence of the domestic as well foreign investors would gain new heights and the economy would be made more stable through adopting rationale policies to remove all hindrances and bottlenecks in this respect. He further informed the delegation that Pakistan was also focusing on Alternative Energy projects like wind, solar energy, coal-based generation and hedropower and that the Bank's support in these fields would be a great help. He said that to meet the shortfall in power, the government wants to increase the generation capacity and intends to install large run of river hydropower projects, such as Kohala and Bunji for which he sought the technical and financial assistance of ADB.
The delegation appreciated the needs of Pakistam and assured to provide all technical and financial assistance to Pakistan in this respect. The head of ADB delegation appreciated the efforts of the govt on emergent steps to cope with energy needs and said that ADB and added that ADB was major financer for power sector in Pakistan and it had also extended help in the water sector mega projects including power transmission enhancement project, power distribution enhancement project, Energy Efficiency improvement and renewable energy development projects.
He said that to meet financial requirement of these projects a multi tranche financing facility to the extent of 800 million US dollars extendable to 1200 million US dollars had been agreed. He added that ADB is also assisting Pakistan in capacity building of power sector institutions for which technical assistance was being extended.