Islamabad, 4th February, 2015: The GoP's initiatives of
developing power generation projects based on coal and "Regasified Liquefied
Natural Gas" (R-LNG) has sparked a lot of interest of the international as
well as local investors' community. While work is in progress on options
like hydel, wind and solar for power generation, the government is also
taking new initiatives on priority to generate power from coal and LNG. This
was stated by the Minister for Water & Power Khawaja Muhammad Asif while
addressing the "Stakeholders Consultative Conference on Coal and R-LNG based
Power Generation Projects" held today at Serena Hotel Islamabad which he was
presiding as Chief Guest. The conference was organized by the Ministry
of Water & Power and Private Power & Infrastructure Board (PPIB) with the
objective to seek views from the stakeholders regarding challenges being
encountered by them in developing IPPs and suggestions to improve the
present Power Policy, Short Term Guidelines and Security Package Agreements
(Implementation and Power Purchase Agreements) with the aim to make them
more productive and effective. The Conference was also attended by the State
Minister for Water & Power, Chaudhry Abid Sher Ali, State Minister for
Petroleum and Natural Resources, Mr. Jam Kamal Khan, Secretary Water & Power
Mr. Mohammad Younus Dagha, Managing Director PPIB Mr. Shah Jahan Mirza
besides high level government officials from various federal/provincial
ministries/departments and local/foreign representatives from different
stakeholders, World Bank, IFC, and various local banks' representatives.
Khawaja Muhamad Asif said that the power sector has
number of problems like circular debt, low recovery of Discos etc., and
these challenges are priority areas of the government. He told the
participants that the government is actively working on Transmission Lines
Policy to attract the investors with their suggestions and by sorting out
the issues being faced by them. The Minister assured the participants that
due to steps being taken by the government, the investors and the public
would get some tangible relief in the power sector by end of this year.
Officials from Ministry of Petroleum and Natural
Resources shed light on various aspects of R-LNG and its usefulness
towards power generation. Managing Director PPIB also highlighted the
importance of R-LNG and Coal for power generation. He conveyed that under
the "Clean, Affordable and Reliable Energy" (CARE) Program, the GoP is
planning to establish IPPs of 3600 MW through R-LNG for which advertisement
will be placed in the national and international print media shortly.
Besides this, R-LNG is also being arranged for existing thermal IPPs to cut
generation cost and achieve higher efficiency, he added.
The Conference resulted into an interactive session, in
which the representatives of investors exchanged their views and explained
the challenges hurdling their efforts in power generation and tabled their
suggestions to remove the bottlenecks and procedural delays, while the
government officials assured their fullest cooperation in addressing their
apprehensions and reservations.
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