Staff Reporter
Islamabad
Minister for Power Omar Ayub Khan said that government is bringing revolution in power sector to make it efficient, sustainable, secure, affordable and competitive.
The Minister expressed these views while chairing the 126th meeting of the Private Power and Infrastructure Board (PPIB) here on Friday.
The govt is promoting hydro and local coal along with wind and solar for lowering the tariff and saving precious foreign exchange for the country for which maximum facilitation is being given to the investors, he added.
The Minister pointed out that the govt is focused on removing the bottlenecks and improving the ease of doing business for encouraging investors to initiate new projects and expand their operations in Pakistan.
The Board approved execution of Implementation Agreement (IA) with Pakistan’s largest Thar coal based power generation project based on state of the art Super Critical technology and also allowed extension in financial closing date of the project as proposed by the PPIB. The 1,320 MW thar coal based power project by Thar Coal Block-1 Power Generation Company (Pvt) Limited (TCB-1) holds significant standing among the fleet of CPEC projects.
The project is at advance stages of development as critical milestones which include issuance of Letter of Support (LOS) and signing of Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) have already been achieved and project is likely to start power generation by March 2021. The project will be connected with Matiri-Lahore Transmission Line which is currently under construction and scheduled to be operational by March 2021.
Managing Director PPIB Mr. Shah Jahan Mirza briefed the Board that under the vision of Government for clean and affordable power generation, PPIB has started issuing Letters of Support under Tripartite Letter of Support (TLOS) Regime of Power Generation Policy 2015 and so far PPIB has issued TLOS to 7.08 MW Riali and 8 MW Kathai hydropower projects in AJ&K within a short period of one month which demonstrates PPIB’s aggressive approach towards harnessing hydro potential. He also remarked that 700 MW Azad Pattan Hydropower Project has recently been included in the CPEC which will expedite the development of project for its completion by June 2026 in accordance with the Generation Expansion plan of NTDC.
NEPRA has already determined tariff of Rs. 7.4064 for the project. The Board was apprised that PPIB is already processing Pakistan’s first private sector Matiari-Lahore Transmission Line Project and will be able to facilitate future Transmission Line projects in the private sector under the Transmission Line Policy 2015, as and when required by the system.
